Wordsworth His Poetry

WORDSWORTH

HIS POETRY

BY

WILLIAM HENRY- HUDSON

Author of “Franco: The Nation and Its Develop-
ment” “An Introduction to tho Study of
Literature” etc. Lute Stiff-Lecturer In Litera-
ture to the University Extension Board of tho
University of London

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worth's “ Complete Poetical Works "

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Firs/ published January 19H
by George G. Harrap £ Co.

59-4/ Parker Street, Iiinsstcay, London, W.0,2

Reprinted : January 1918;
March 1920; March 1922;
April 1924

Printed in Great Britain at The Baelantyne Press by

SPOTTISWOODE, BAEEAKTYKE & CO. LTD
Colchester, London & Eton

GENERAL PREFACE

A GLANCE through the pages of this little
book will suffice to disclose the general
plan of the series of which it forms a
part. Only a few words of explanation, there-
fore, will be necessary.

The point of departure is the undeniable fact
that with the vast majority of young students
of literature a living interest in the work of any
poet can best be aroused, and an intelligent
appreciation of it secured, when it is immediately
associated with the character and career of the
poet himself. The cases are indeed few and far
between in which much fresh light will not be
thrown upon a poem by some knowledge of the
personality of the writer, while it will often be
found that the most direct — perhaps even the
only — way to the heart of its meaning lies
through a consideration of the circumstances
in which it had its birth. The purely aesthetic
critic may possibly object that a poem should
be regarded simply as a self-contained and
detached piece of art, having no personal
affiliations or bearings. Of the validity of this
as an abstract principle nothing need now be
said. The fact remains that, in the earlier
stages of study at any rate, poetry is most valued
and loved when it is made to seem most human
and vital ; and the human and vital interest

GENERAL PREFACE

addition, so much more general literary criti-
cism will be incorporated as may seem to be
needed to supplement the biographical material,
and to exhibit both the essential qualities and
the historical importance of his work.

It is believed that the plan thus pursued is
substantially in the nature of a new departure,
and that the volumes of this series, constituting
as they will an introduction to the study of
some of our greatest poets, will be found useful
to teachers and students of literature, and no
less to the general lover of English poetry.

•...WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON

POEMS QUOTED IN WHOLE

My Heart leaps up when I behold 12

Nutting 24

The Reverie of Poor Susan 38

She was a Phantom of Delight 49

To my Sister 59

Lines written in Early Spring do

Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey 7X
I'wandered lonely as a Cloud 78

The Poet’s Epitaph 79

Yes, it was the Mountain Echo 82

Expostulation and Reply 84

The Tables Turned 85

-ucy Gray j* • 90

Strange Fits of Passion have I known 94

She dwelt among the untrodden Ways 95

I travelled among unknown Men 95

Three Years she grew in Sun and Shower 96

-A Slumber did my Spirit seal 97

Michael 102

Resolution and Independence 117

To a Highland Girl 129

At the Grave of Bums 132

Stepping Westward 135

-The Solitary Reaper '$ ’ 136

Peele Castle in a £torm 139

Character of the Happy Warrior 142

Ode : Intimations of Immortality 146

If thou indeed derive thy Light from Heaven 158

Laodamia 159

Upon an Evening of Splendour and Beauty 168

Yarrow Revisited 174

Extempore Effusion upontbeDeath of JamesHogg 179
To the Cuckoo 182

Ode to Duty 194

9

SONNETS

PAGB

To the Memory of Raisley Calvert 54

Composed upon Westminster Bridge 123

It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free 123

Nuns fret not at their Convent’s Narrow Room 124
Scorn not the Sonnet 125

To a Painter # 126

On the Same Subject 127

Not ’mid the World’s vain Objects 156

Alas I what boots it with laborious Quest 156

-Milton 1 thou should’st be living at this Hour .157
Seathwaite Chapel 171

After-Thought 171

I saw the Figure of a lovely Maid 173

The World is too much with us 191

POEMS QUOTED IN PART

The Prelude 15, 16, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,
33, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49

Matthew 19

Lines written as a School Exercise 20

Extract from the Conclusion of a Poem composed

in Anticipation of leaving School 21

The Sparrow’s Nest 48

An Evening Walk 51

The Excursion 55, 82

Goody Blake and Harry Gill 66

Hart-Leap Well 70

The Recluse 98

Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle 154

Yarrow Unvisited 165

Yarrow Visited 166

Musings at Aquapendente 17S

The Cuckoo at Lavema 183

10

WORDSWORTH
& HIS POETRY

T HE life of Wordsworth yields little of
interest to the biographer in search of
materials for a good story. It was a long
life of continuous industry and of great achieve-
ment. But so far as outward fortunes v/ere con-
cerned it was singularly uneventful. Some stir
of excitement, it is true, entered into it during a
few years of storm and stress. That excitement,
however, was over by the time Wordsworth
was ' twenty-six, and with his settlement at
Grasmere, when he had still half a century of
poetic activity before him, “ the external events
of his life,” to use the words of one of his most
sympathetic critics, “ may be said to come to
an end.” Henceforth he dwelt for the most
part in retirement and “ from the crowded
street remote ” 1 ; not indeed as a recluse, for
he was never that ; but as one who, like
Cowper, looked out upon the world by preference
“ through the loopholes of retreat.” It was a
happy life, too — and happy lives are notoriously
undramatic ; a life of steady calm, broken
only by those occasional sorrows which are
inseparable from the common human lot.
Even the interest of struggle against circum-
stance was lacking in it. For many years
Wordsworth was poor. But he never had to
fight his way. To one of his frugal habits the

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

meagre resources of his early manhood were
ample for all immediate needs ; and as fresh
needs arose a kindly providence seemed ever
ready to meet them.

Nor must we expect to find in Wordsworth’s
biography much of that inner interest which in
the life of a man of letters often takes the place
of the outer interest which we look for in the
life of a man of action. His intellectual
history after manhood had been reached was
almost as uneventful as the history of his
external career. At thirty his mind had come
to its full development, and he had learned from
experience all that experience had to teach.
Then his thought hardened, and the hardening
process inevitably meant cessation of growth.
His own refusal to admit a chronological
-arrangement of his poems, perverse as it cer-
tainly was, had therefore this amount of justi-
fication, that such an arrangement would have
little to tell us about the evolution of his mind.

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky :

So was it when my life began ;

So is it now I am a man ;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die 1

The Child is father of the Man ;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

These familiar lines deserve to be placed where
Wordsworth placed them, in the forefront of
12

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

his collective works, for they express not
only, as he intended, the continuity, but
also the striking uniformity of his intellectual
life.

Though, as we shall see, the connexion be-
tween Wordsworth’s poetry and his personal
experience is of the closest kind, a comparatively
slight body of narrative will therefore serve us
here as the framework of our study. It will,
moreover, be clear that in the writing of this
narrative the demands of symmetry must be
disregarded, since for our purposes a much
fuller treatment is required of the years in
which his character was being formed and the
lines of his work determined, than of that long
after-period during which, his poetic education
^complete and his plans fully settled , 1 his mind
rested at peace within itself. It is fortunate
that in what is thus the most important part of
our subject we shall be able to rely upon the
authority of the poet himself. When on his
retirement to “ his native mountains ” he
resolved *' to construct a literary work that
might live,” it was, he felt, ” a reasonable
thing ’ ’ that before addressing himself to his
task “ he should take a review of his own mind,
and examine how far Nature and Education
had qualified him for such an employment.”
He therefore ” undertook to record, in verse,
the origin and progress of his own powers, as
far as he was acquainted with them ' ’ 2 ; and
the result was the long autobiographical poem

1 See " The Prelude," idr. 302-311. * Preface to " The Excursion,"

13

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

which, kept in manuscript till after his death,
was then published under the title suggested by
his widow — “The Prelude.” Wordsworth re-
garded it as a “ thing unprecedented in literary
history that a man should talk so much about
himself,” 1 and he very justly found fault with
its “ redundancies.” Yet its wealth of minute
detail makes it specially valuable, and if in
many places it is prolix and even dull, it is
always illuminating. This poem we shall here
take as our chief guide through the first thirty
years of Wordsworth’s life, drawing upon it
freely even when its actual language is not
reproduced.

II

W ILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born
on April 7, 1770, at Cockermouth,
Cumberland. His father, John
Wordsworth, was an attorney-at-law and land-
agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Lord
Lonsdale ; his mother Anne (Cookson), the
daughter of a flourishing Penrith tradesman.
He was the second of five children, his elder
brother Richard being his senior by two years.
Then came the one girl of the family, Dorothy,
whose name is indissolubly linked with his own,
and the two younger brothers, John and
Christopher.

William was only eight when a great calamity

1 Letter to Beaumont, May t, 1805. Evidently he forgot Montaigne and

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

In narrow cares, thy little daily growth
Of calm enjoyments, after eighty years,

And more than eighty, of untroubled life ;

Childless, yet by the strangers to thy blood
Honoured with little less than filial love.

What joy was mine to see thee once again,

Thee and thy dwelling, and a crowd of things
About its narrow precincts all beloved,

And many of them seeming yet my own 1
Why should I speak of what a thousand hearts
Have felt, and every man alive can guess ?

The rooms, the court, the garden were not left
Long unsaluted, nor the sunny seat
Round the stone table under the dark pine,

Friendly to studious or to festive hours j
Nor that unruly child of mountain birth,

The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed
Within our garden, found himself at once,

As if by trick insidious and unkind,

Stripped of his voice and left to dimple down
(Without an effort and without a will)

A channel paved by man’s officious care.

I looked at him and smiled, and smiled again,

And in the press of twenty thousand thoughts,

" Ha,” quoth I, 11 pretty prisoner, are you there ! ”
Well might sarcastic Fancy then have whispered,

“ An emblem here behold of thy own life ;

In its late course of even days with all
Their smooth enthralment ; ” but the heart was full,
Too full for that reproach. My aged Dame
Walked proudly at my side : she guided me ;

I willing, nay — nay, wishing to be led.

— The face of every neighbour whom I met
Was like a volume to me ; some were hailed
Upon the road, some busy at their work,

*7

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Unceremonious greetings interchanged
With half the length of a long field between.

Among my schoolfellows I scattered round
Like recognitions, but with some constraint
Attended, doubtless, with a little pride,

But with more shame, for my habiliments,

The transformation wrought by gay attire.

Not less delighted did I take my place
At our domestic table : and, dear Friend !

In this endeavour simply to relate
A Poet’s history, may I leave untold
The thankfulness with which I laid me down
In my accustomed bed, more welcome now
Perhaps than if it had been more desired
Or been more often thought of with regret ;

That lowly bed whence I had heard the wind
Roar, and the rain beat hard ; where I so oft
Had lain awake on summer nights to watch
The moon in splendour couched among the leaves
Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood ;

Had watched her with fixed eyes while to and fro

In the dark summit of the waving tree

She rocked with every impulse of the breeze . 1

One old friend from whom he received a
hearty welcome on that memorable return to
his well-loved haunts calls for passing mention
— the “rough terrier” who had been his
faithful companion in many a ramble.

Among the masters at Hawkshead there was
one, the Rev. William Taylor, who, though he
died while Wordsworth was still at school, and
so passed early out of his life, left a deep im-

* "The Prelude,” iv 27-92

18

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

pression upon him . 1 He is particularly interest-
ing to us here because he was in part the original
of the Matthew of the poems, whom we know
as a typical representative of Wordsworth’s
ideal of simple manhood and as an exponent of
his elemental philosophy.

The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs
Of one tired out with fun and madness ;

The tears which came to Matthew’s eyes
Were tears of light, the dew of gladness.

Yet, sometimes, when the secret cup
Of still and serious thought went round,

It seemed as if he drank it up —

He felt with spirit so profound . 2

Such was Matthew’s “ happy soul.” Such
had been Taylor’s. We must remember, how-
ever, that while many of Taylor’s characteristics
enter into his composition, Matthew is con-
fessedly an idealization. " Like the Wanderer
in ‘The Excursion, ’ this schoolmaster was
made up of several, both of his class and men of
other occupations .” 3

A boy of Wordsworth’s disposition is certain
to get much of his most valuable education from
independent contact with things outside the
class-room walls ; and it was fortunate for
him, therefore, that the routine at Hawkshead
left him plenty of opportunity to go his own
way. If his schooldays were “very happy

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

ones,” it was, he afterwards said, “ chiefly
because I was left at liberty then, and in the
vacations, to read whatever books I liked. For
example, I read all Fielding’s works, * Don
Quixote,’ 1 Gil Bias,’ and any part of Swift
that I liked — ‘ Gulliver’s Travels * and the
* Tale of the [sic] Tub ’ being both much to my
taste.” There is nothing to show that his poetic
genius was at all precocious. His first verses
were composed as a task set by his master, the
subject being “ The Summer Vacation,” though
he was moved to add a sequel on his own account
on “Return to School.” “There was no-
thing,” he declares, “remarkable in either
poem ; but I was called upon among other
scholars to write verses upon the completion of
the second centenary from the foundation of
the school in 1585 by Archbishop Sandys.
These verses were much admired — far more
than they deserved, for they were but a tame
imitation of Pope’s versification, and a little in
his style.”

As an example of the kind of verse which
Wordsworth was capable of producing when a
boy I will quote a passage from “ Lines written
as a School Exercise - at Hawkshead, Anno
Aitatis 14 ” :

When Superstition left the golden light
And fled indignant to the shades of night ;

When pure Religion reared the peaceful breast
And lulled the warring passions into rest,

Drove far away the savage thoughts that roll
In the dark mansions of the bigot’s soul,

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Enlivening Hope displayed her cheerful ray,

And beamed on Britain's sons a brighter day ;

So when on Ocean’s face the storm subsides,
Hushed are the winds and silent are the tides ;
The God of day, in all the pomp of light,

Moves through the vault of heaven, and dissipates
the night.

And so on and so on. These lines are well
enough in their way, and their smoothness and
correctness are rather remarkable. But they
are of course in the conventional manner of the
time ; they are purely imitative ; they are such
as any clever boy of fourteen might have
written ; and they certainly give no promise of
unusual poetic powers in years to come. After
this, however, his genius must soon have begun
to grow, for we recognize a very different
quality in the following :

EXTRACT

FROM THE CONCLUSION OF A POEM, COMPOSED
IN ANTICIPATION OF LEAVING SCHOOL
Dear native regions, I foretell,

From what I feel at this farewell,

That, wheresoe'er my steps may tend,

And whensoe’er my course shall end,

If in that hour a single tie
Survive of local sympathy,

My soul will cast the backward view,

The longing look alone on you.

Thus, while the Sun sinks down to rest
Far in the regions of the west,

Though to the vale no parting beam
Be given, not one memorial gleam,

2X

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

A lingering light he fondly throws
On the dear hills where first he rose.

Here there is the accent of truth and sincerity,
and Wordsworth was right in praising the
beauty of the closing image. It is interesting
to note that these lines were afterwards recast
in blank verse in “ The Prelude.” Words-
worth first describes the spot and the circum-
stances in which they were written, and then
proceeds to paraphrase the thoughts which
flowed “in a pure stream of words fresh from
the heart.”

A grove there is whose boughs
Stretch from the western marge of Thurstonmere,
With length of shade so thick, that whoso glides
Along the line of low-roofed water, moves
As in a cloister. Once — while, in that shade
Loitering, I watched the golden beams of light
Flung from the setting sun, as they reposed
In silent beauty on the naked ridge
Of a high eastern hill — thus flowed my thoughts
In a pure stream of words fresh from the heart :
Dear native Regions, wheresoe’er shall dose
My mortal course, there will I think on you ;

Dying, will cast on you a backward look ;

Even as this setting sun (albeit the Vale
Is nowhere touched by one memorial gleam)

Doth with the fond remains of his last power
Still linger, and a farewell lustre sheds,

On the dear mountain-tops where first he rose . 1

The quotation just made leads us directly to
what is incomparably the most potent element

* " The Prelude," Wii. 458-473.

22

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

in Wordsworth’s early education — the awaken-
ing of his love of nature. At first this was
only a healthy boy’s love of the open air and
the freedom of the fields. Boating on Esth-
waite Water in summer, skating on the frozen
lake in winter beneath the sparkling stars, long
rambles at dawn, nutting and bird’s-nesting :
nature to begin with meant these things for
him as for his companions, and meant little
else.

A boy I loved the sun,

Not as I since have loved him, as a pledge
And surety of our earthly life, a light
Which we behold and feel we are alive ;

Nor for his bounty to so many worlds —

But for this cause, that I had seen him lay
His beauty on the morning hills, had seen
The western mountain touch his setting orb.

In many a thoughtless hour, when, from excess
Of happiness, my blood appeared to flow
For its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy . 1

But before long this animal love of nature
began to change into a love which was mystical
and spiritual. The “ creative soul ” awoke
and the world became alive for him with strange
hints and symbols. A new glory and a new
meaning stole across the face of familiar things,
and whispers came to him from afar which
seemed “ most audible, then, when the fleshly
ear . . . forgot her functions, and slept un-
disturbed.” This great transformation in his
relations with nature — this heightening and

. * "The Prelude," II, 178-188.

23

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

deepening of his primitive feelings— was, of
course, gradual. There was also, as we shall
see presently, an intermediate stage in his de-
velopment. Yet certain experiences stood out
as landmarks in his mind. One such is com-
memorated in the lines entitled “ Nutting,”
originally intended for “ The Prelude,” but
omitted “ as not being wanted there.” “ These
verses,” Wordsworth told Miss Fenwick, “ arose
out of the remembrance of feelings I had often
had when a boy.” The expedition described
was in object an ordinary nutting expedition
only, and the lad set out in his oldest clothes
and with wallet and crook, intent, as on many
a former occasion, upon the ripe wealth of the
hazel coppices he already knew so well. But
while he was exulting in the results of his
“merciless ravage,” a sudden shock of pain
gave him pause. He realized that he had
somehow inflicted injury upon the life that was
all about him and felt the reproof of the “ silent
trees ” and “ the intruding sky.” This new
sense of the life in nature — of the “ spirit in the
woods " — never afterwards forsook him.

NUTTING
It seems a day

(I speak of one from many singled out)

One of those heavenly days that cannot die ;

When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,

I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o’er my shoulders slung,

A nutting-crook in hand ; and turned my steps
24

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Tow’rd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,

By exhortation of my frugal Dame —

Motley accoutrement, of power to smile

At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, — and, in truth,

More ragged than need was I O’er pathless rocks,

Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets,

Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook

Unvisited, where not a broken bough

Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign

Of devastation ; but the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung,

A virgin scene I — A little while I stood,

Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in ; and, with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed
The banquet or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played ;

A temper known to those, who, after long
And weary expectation, have been blest
With sudden happiness beyond all hope.

Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves
The violets of five seasons re-appear
And fade, unseen by any human eye ;

Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on
For ever ; and I saw the sparkling foam,

And — with my cheek on one of those green stones
That, fleeced with moss, under the shady trees,

Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep—

I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound,

In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay
Tribute to ease ; and, of its joy secure,

The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,

Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And on the vacant air. Then up I rose,

And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with
crash

And merciless ravage : and the shady nook
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being : and, unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past ;

Ere from the mutilated bower I turned
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,

I felt a sense of pain when I beheld _

The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky —

Then, dearest Maiden, move along these shades
In gentleness of heart ; with gentle hand
Touch— -for there is a spirit in the woods.

Another noteworthy experience is recorded in
4 ‘The Prelude.” One summer evening he
pushed out alone for a row on the lake. It was
a stolen pleasure, and perhaps he thought to
enjoy it all the more on that account. Absolute
stillness hung over the waters ; above him
“ was nothing but the stars and the grey sky ” ;
beyond, a peak towered up 44 black and huge.”
A great awe fell upon him as he rowed :

I struck and struck again.

And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,

For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,

Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned.

And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree ;

There in her mooring-place I left my bark, —

And through the meadows homeward went, in grave

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And serious mood ; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being ; o’er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. 1

An indistinct feeling was left with him of
something vast and mysterious.

No familiar shapes

Remained, no pleasant images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields ;

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. 2

Then follows a fine passage of recapitulation :

Wisdom and Spirit of the universe 1
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought
That givest to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion, not in vain
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul ;

Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,

But with high objects, with enduring things —

With life and nature — purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,

And sanctifying, by such discipline,

Both pain and fear, until we recognise
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,

1 "The Prelude,” 1. 380-395. * Ibid. 395-400,

27

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

When vapours rolling down the valley made
A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods,

At noon and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
When, by the margin of the trembling lake,
Beneath the gloomy hills homeward I went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine ;

Mine was it in the fields both day and night,

And by the waters, all the summer long . 1

Through such experiences as these the
spiritual significance of the universe was
gradually revealed to him. “ The earth and
the common face of Nature 1 ’ began to speak to
him “ rememberable things."

’Twere long to tell

What spring and autumn, what the winter snows,
And what the summer shade, what day and night,
Evening and morning, sleep and waking, thought
From sources inexhaustible, poured forth
To feed the spirit of religious love
In which I walked with Nature . 2

His spiritual faculties, now quickened into
activity, found their chief satisfaction in inti-
mate communion with the indwelling spirit of
external things, but in such communion the
spiritual faculties were themselves the inter-
mediaries and interpreters.

An auxiliar light

Came from my mind, which on the setting sun
Bestowed new splendour ; the melodious birds,

The fluttering breezes, fountains that run on

t ' "The Prelude," 1. 401-424. 1 Ibid. ii. 353-359.

28

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Murmuring so sweetly in themselves, obeyed
A like dominion, and the midnight storm
Grew darker in the presence of my eye :

Hence my obeisance, my devotion hence,

And hence my transport . 1
But perhaps the most decisive event in his
early spiritual history occurred during that first
summer vacation from Cambridge, of which I
have already spoken. Though it carries us a
little beyond the point actually reached in our
story we may most fittingly deal with it here.
It was, as will be seen, in the nature of a great
awakening to a sense of his destiny and calling.
Despite the stir of higher impulses he had
allowed himself to be lured away by “ heady
schemes ” and “ trivial pleasures.” Then
came “ a particular hour ” of uplift and illumi-
nation which, as he was fain to believe, exercised
a lasting influence over his life. He had been
indulging in what to a youth of his austere
temper seemed like “ giddy revelry ” :

’Mid a throng

Of maids and youths, old men, and matrons staid,

A medley of all tempers, I had passed
The night in dancing, gaiety, and mirth,

With din of instruments and shuffling feet,

And glancing forms, and tapers glittering,

And unaimed prattle flying up and down ;

Spirits upon the stretch, and here and there
Slight shocks of young love-liking interspersed,
Whose transient pleasure mounted to the head,

And tingled through the veins.

* “ The Prelude/' B. 368-376.

29

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

This continued till dawn, for :

Ere we retired,

The cock had crowed, and now the eastern sky
Was kindling, not unseen, from humble copse
And open field, through which the pathway wound,
And homeward led my steps.

Then came the never-to-be-forgotten solitary
walk in the dewy freshness of the dawn :

Magnificent

The morning rose, in memorable pomp,

Glorious as e’er I had beheld — in front,

The sea lay laughing at a distance ; near,

The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light ;

And in the meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn —

Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds.

And labourers going forth to till the fields.

Ah 1 need I say, dear Friend I that to the brim
My heart was full ; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me ; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,

A dedicated Spirit. 1

The striking contrast between the noisy scene
just left behind and the glories of sunrise over
mountains, sea, and meadows, might well have
impressed even a less sensitive mind than his.
But for him it was fraught with an unmistakable
and irresistible appeal. This was one of the
formative moments of his life :

1 " The Prelude,” Jr. 323-337.

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

On I walked

In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.

It is well that we should dwell upon the early
growth of Wordsworth’s " religious love ” of
nature for the simple reason that we are here
in touch with the essential principles of all his
after-life. To that love, as he himself again
and again averred, he was primarily indebted
for guidance in the time of darkness and peril,
for strength in need, for consolation in sorrow,
for the deepest happiness he had ever been
privileged to enjoy. Let one passage in testi-
mony be here reproduced ; another, even more
memorable, will follow presently :

If in my youth I have been pure in heart,

If, mingling with the world, I am content
With my own modest pleasures, and have lived
With God and Nature communing, removed
From little enmities and low desires —

The gift is yours ; if in these times of fear,

This melancholy waste of hopes o’erthrown,

If, ’mid indifference and apathy,

And wicked exultation when good men
On every side fall off, we know not how,

To selfishness, disguised in gentle names
Of peace and quiet and domestic love,

Yet mingled not unwillingly with sneers
On visionary minds ; if, in this time
Of dereliction and dismay, I yet
Despair not of our nature, but retain
A more than Roman confidence, a faith
That fails not, in all sorrow my support,

The blessing of my life — the gift is yours,

31

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Ye winds and sounding cataracts I 'tis yours,

Ye mountains I thine, 0 Nature 1 Thou hast fed
My lofty speculations ; and in thee,

For this uneasy heart of ours, I find
A never-failing principle of joy
And purest passion. 1

Ill

O N their father’s death William and his
brothers had passed into the care of
two uncles, Richard Wordsworth and
Christopher Crackenthorpe. The Wordsworth
family had not been left as well off as might
have been expected from John Wordsworth’s
position, for Sir James Lowther, who had some
time before borrowed £5000 from him, now
refused to repay, and a good deal of the
attorney’s- remaining fortune was wasted in
vain efforts to recover the money. In these
circumstances the two guardians behaved with
commendable generosity ; they provided the
funds necessary to keep the boys at Hawkshead,
and when the time came sent two of them,
William and Christopher, to complete their
education at the university.

It was on a dreary morning in October 1787
that Wordsworth entered Cambridge. He was
in high spirits and “ full of hope.” But he
soon found that the university was uncongenial
to him. Its moral and intellectual atmosphere
was dull and uninspiring. The life led by the

» "The Prelude," il. 427-450.

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

undergraduates was unprofitable and often
worse. The prescribed routine of study was by
no means to his taste, and academic distinction
“ but little sought ” by him and “ little won.”
Thrown largely upon himself he found refuge
in nature and in his own soul, and began to
discover “what independent solaces” were
his “ to mitigate the injurious sway of place
and circumstance.” Often leaving behind him
“the crowd, buildings, and groves,” he would
wander alone about the “ level fields,” missing
the mountains to which he had been accustomed,
yet still well pleased to peruse “ the common
countenance of earth and sky ” ; 1 while even-
ing after evening it was his habit, even in the
depth of winter, to linger in the “ college
groves ” and “ tributary walks,” brooding on
many things. In books, too, he found cheering
companionship, though his “ over-love of free-
dom ” prevented him from substituting any
“ settled plan ” of reading for that laid down
in the curriculum. 2 He read the great old
English poets :

Beside the pleasant Mill of Trompington
I laughed with Chaucer in the hawthorn shade ;
Heard him, while birds were warbling, tell his tales
Of amorous passion. And that gentle Bard,

Chosen by the Muses for their Page of State —

Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
With the moon’s beauty and the moon’s soft pace,

I called him Brother, Englishman, and Friend 1
Yea, our blind Poet, who in his later day,

1 « The Prelude," ill. 90 B. * Ibid. rl. 35 it.

33

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Stood almost single ; uttering odious truth —
Darkness before, and danger’s voice behind,

Soul awful — if the earth has ever lodged
An awful soul — I seemed to see him here
Familiarly, and in his scholar’s dress
Bounding before me, yet a stripling youth —

A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks
Angelical, keen eye, courageous look,

And conscious step of purity and pride. 1

Cervantes and Shakespeare were also added
to his list of friends. One entire book of “ The
Prelude ’ ’ is devoted to books and their influence,
and in'it Wordsworth breathes a blessing on all
those “inspired souls” whose works “lay
their sure foundations in the heart of man,”
from the Hebrew poets and “ Homer the great
Thunderer ” down to the nameless ballad-
singers whose “ wren-like warblings ” are the
delight of “ cottagers and spinners at the wheel.”

His first college vacation he spent, as we have
seen, among his “ native hills.” The following
summer — that of 1789 — he visited his grand-
parents at Penrith, and there met his sister
Dorothy, whom he had not seen for nearly four
years. 2 There, too, he found “another maid,
who also shed a gladness o’er that season ” —
his cousin Mary Hutchinson, who years before
had been with him at a Dame School in Penrith,
but who now first stirred tender feelings which
were later to blossom into love. These two
holidays were full of happiness. But his spirit
was too restless to be satisfied even with such

* "The Prelude,” HI. 375-292. * Ibid. ri. 195-203.

34

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

unalloyed pleasures as they afforded. He began
to crave for wider horizons and a more varied
knowledge of life ; and so when the third
summer once more brought him freedom, he
resolved upon spending it in a walking tour on
the Continent. Such an enterprise would not
be in the least surprising now. In Words-
worth’s youth it was an “unprecedented
course,” upon which he did not enter without
considerable misgivings, But his mind was
made up and his plan was duly carried out.
“ Lightly equipped,” says the poetic record —
which, being translated into prose, means that
each carried a stout stick and had all the “ need-
ments ” for the journey “ tied up in a pocket-
handkerchief ” — he and his “ youthful friend,”
Robert Jones — “ he, too, a mountaineer ” — set
out “ side by side, bound to the distant Alps.”

It was a moment of great expectancy among
the nations, for the Revolution had brought the
promise of a new and glorious era in the un-
folding life of man.

Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,
France standing on the top of golden hours,

And human nature seeming horn again. 1

The route which the young travellers had
marked out lay through Burgundy, down the
Rhone, by way of Savoy to Geneva, Villeneuve,
Martigny and Chamounix, across the Alps by
the Simplon as far as the Italian lakes, and
thence back by Lucerne, Zurich, Schaffhausen,

1 " The Prelude,” ri. 339 341.

35

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

the Rhine and Cologne, and so through Belgium
to Calais. They chanced to land in Calais on
the 13th July, the eve of the first anniversary
of the fall of the Bastille, and of “ that great
federal day ” when the king was to swear
allegiance to the new constitution ; and evi-
dences of the wonderful enthusiasm which the
Revolution had inspired met them at once on
every side, for

there we saw,

In a mean city, and among a few,

How bright a face is worn when joy of one
Is joy for tens of millions . 1

Then, striking south, they took their way
through hamlets and towns u gaudy with
reliques of that festival ” ; “ songs, garlands,
mirth, banners, and happy faces ” made their
road gay ; 2 and even in “ sequestered villages ”
they

found benevolence and blessedness

Spread like a fragrance everywhere, when spring

Hath left no corner of the land untouched.

More than once they were witnesses of open-
air u dances of liberty,” and a little later, while
sailing up the Rhone, fell in with a number of
delegates returning

From the great spousals newly solemnised
At their chief city, in the sight of Heaven . 8

All this was very exhilarating. Yet Words-

1 " The Prelude,” vi. 346-349.

* Sonnet : “ Jones I as from Calais southward you and I."

* “The Prelude,” vi. 389-390.

36

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY"

worth was affected by these and other similar
experiences less than might perhaps have been
expected. For reasons which he himself will
explain presently, nature and the wonders of
“ the ever-living Universe ” interested him far
more than political excitement and the awakened
hopes of man. “ A glorious time, a happy
time ’ ’ indeed it was, when * ‘ triumphant looks ’ ’
were “ the common language of all eyes.” But
A stripling, scarcely of the household then
' Of social life, I looked upon these things
As from a distance ; heard, and saw, and felt,
Was touched, but with no intimate concern. 1
He rather turned from these to the “ new
delights ” which bountiful nature spread round
his steps “ like sunshine o’er green fields.”

IV

W ordsworth took his degree in
January 1791, and left the univer-
sity with no settled plans for the
future. His relatives wanted him to enter the
Church, but this he felt would be a mistake.
He shrank from the law, which was also pro-
posed, and though he was conscious of leanings
towards the army, a military career was for
several reasons out of the question.

In this state of uncertainty he drifted to
London, where he spent some months in idle-
ness. He wandered about the streets ; saw all
the “ sights ” ; frequented the theatre ; heard

1 "The Prelude," ri. 776-779.

37

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

the “brawls of lawyers in their courts”;,
listened to many sermons, not always to edifica-
tion ; and in the House of Commons was much
impressed by the oratory of Burke. Yet save
that he was moved to astonishment and grief
by the squalor, extravagance, and wickedness
of the great metropolis, this brief residence in
London influenced him but little. The spirit of
nature still haunted him in the city streets , 1 and
even amid the most sordid surroundings “ the
Soul of Beauty and enduring Life vouchsafed
her inspiration.” Here undoubtedly we have
the germ of one bf his early poems, “ The
Reverie of Poor Susan.” “This arose,” he
said, “ out of my observations of the affecting
music of these birds ” — the caged thrushes —
“hanging in this way in the London streets
during the freshness and stillness of the spring
morning,” and it crystallizes what must have
been a frequent experience with him during his
perambulations — the transforming power of a
sudden flash of memory and the vision which it
brings with it . 2

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN
At the comer of Wood Street, when daylight appears.
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three
years :

Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

1 “The Prelude," vii. 765-771,

■ This poem was, however, probably written somewhat later, during the
short visit which Wordsworth and Dorothy paid to their brother Richard in
London, in 1797.

38

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

'Tis a note of enchantment ; what ails her ? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ;

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,

And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has' tripped with her pail ;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove’s,

The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven : but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade :

The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes I

Still quite at sea regarding his prospects,
Wordsworth now determined to return to
France, this time, however, not for a brief visit
but for a lengthy sojourn. His immediate
purpose was the thorough mastery of the
French language. But we may surmise that he
was in part influenced by growing interest in
the French cause.

His 11 readiest course ” to Orleans, which he
had selected as his place of residence, lay
through Paris, and there he remained a few
days, seeking out “ each spot of old or recent
fame” — “the latter chiefly,” as he signifi-
cantly adds. He listened to debates in the
National Assembly and the Hall of the Jacobins,
and “ saw the Revolutionary Power toss like a
ship at anchor, rocked by storms.” He wan-
dered through the arcades of the Palais Royal,
and ‘‘stared and listened” while “hawkers

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

and haranguers ” and “ hissing Factionists
with ardent eyes ” made “ hubbub wild ” about
him. He made a pilgrimage to the ruins of the
Bastille

and from the rubbish gathered up a stone,
And pocketed the relic, in the guise
Of an enthusiast . 1

Yet there was, he confesses, something rather
factitious about his emotion, and when he went
on to Orleans he was still, in a land which
“swarmed with passions” and amid all the
violent concussions of the hour, curiously
apathetic. Whence this indifference ? It was
due, he replies, in part to his failure, through
want of proper knowledge and insight, to realize
the portentous significance of what was taking
place ; but in part also to the fact that to one
of his temper and early training the Revolution
at that stage of its development seemed after
all very much a matter of course. He under-
stood little indeed about the “ nice distinctions
then on every tongue, of natural rights and
civil ” ; the “ acts of nations and their passing
interests ” failed to move him ; but the great
essential principles of liberty, equality, and the
brotherhood of man were in his very blood.

For, bom in a poor district, and which yet
Retaineth more of ancient homeliness,

Than any other nook of English ground,

It was my fortune scarcely to have seen,

Through the whole tenor of my school-day time,

" The Prelude," lx. 69-71

40

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

The face of one, who, whether boy or man,

Was vested with attention or respect

Through claims of wealth or blood ; nor was it least

Qf many benefits, in later years

Derived from academic institutes

And rules, that they held something up to view

Of a Republic, where all stood thus far

Upon equal ground ; that we were brothers all

In honour, as in one community.

Scholars and gentlemen ; where, furthermore,
Distinction open lay to all that came,

And wealth and titles were in less esteem
Than talents, worth, and prosperous industry.

Add unto this, subservience from the first
To presences of God’s mysterious power
Made manifest in Nature’s sovereignty,

And fellowship with venerable books,

To sanction the proud workings of the soul,

And mountain liberty. It could not be
But that one tutored thus should look with awe
Upon the faculties of man, receive
Gladly the highest promises, and hail,

As best, the government of equal rights
And individual worth. And hence, O Friend
If at the first great outbreak I rejoiced
Less than might well befit my youth, the cause
In part lay here, that unto me the events
Seemed nothing out of nature’s certain course,

A gift that was come rather late than soon . 1

A change of spirit occurred during his sojourn
at Orleans and Blois, between which places he
passed nearly a year. He now became intimate
with “ a band of military officers ” of strongly

* "The Prelude," ix. 215-248.

41

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

anti-revolutionary sentiments, and in his many
discussions with them the ” zeal, which yet had
slumbered, now in opposition burst forth like a
Polar summer .” 1

Among them too, as it happened, was one
“ of other mould ” — a patriot and a zealous
supporter of the popular cause. This was
Michel Beaupuy, a man whose noble soul was
filled with the high and generous enthusiasm of
humanity. Towards the poor and the down-
trodden in particular his heart went out in
warmest sympathy.

Man he loved

As man ; and, to the mean ana the obscure,

And all the homely in their homely works,
Transferred a courtesy which had no air
Of condescension . 2

With this fine product and representative of
the early revolutionary faith, whose name, he
thought, was fully worthy to stand beside “ the
worthiest of antiquity,” Wordsworth formed a
close friendship, and together they often can-
vassed the great problems of government and
society. These endless talks exerted a profound
influence upon his mind. His “ hatred of
absolute rule, where will of one is law of all,'*
daily gained stronger hold upon him, and this
hatred had for its concomitant an ever-growing
love of and pity for “ the abject multitude.”
One day, in the course of their walk, he and
Beaupuy happened to meet “ a hunger-bitten

• "The Prelude," lx. 254-256. * Ibid. lx. 306-310,

42

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

girl ” listlessly knitting “ with pallid hands ”
and leading by a cord tied to her arm a heifer
which, as it followed, picked a scanty meal
from the hedges by the wayside. This concrete
example of the misery of the masses of the
people touched Beaupuy’s tender .heart. “ ’Tis
against that," he exclaimed, "that we are
fighting." And Wordsworth shared his faith
in the fundamental humanitarianism of the
revolutionary cause.

I with him believed
That a benignant spirit was abroad
Which might hot be withstood, that poverty
Abject as this would in a little time
Be found no more, that we should see the earth
Unthwarted in her wish to recompense
The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil,

All institutes for ever blotted out
That legalised exclusion, empty pomp
Abolished, sensual state and cruel power
Whether by edict of the one or few ;

And finally, as sum and crown of all,

Should see the people having a strong hand
In framing their own laws ; whence better days
To all mankind . 1

Doubts and ominous forebodings at times
disturbed his faith. On his former visit to the
Continent he had been troubled by the expulsion
of the monks of the Chartreuse . 2 Now, as he

1 " The Prelude," Sx. 528-532.

* Ibid, vi. 429-435. It appears, however, that Wordsworth was in errol
In supposing that the monte had been expelled. The inldiers whose invasion
ol their solitude aroused his ire, were only making s “ domiciliary visit.”
See Legouis' " La Jeunesse de Wordsworth.”

43

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

wandered along the banks of the Loire, and
recalled all the romantic associations of that
beautiful region, the violence of his political
partisanship was checked for the moment by
a vivid sense of the sanctity and charm of the
past . 1 But such misgivings were only occa-
sional. Wordsworth was now a 4 4 patriot ” ; his
heart was 4 4 all given to the people ’ ’ and his 4 4 love
was theirs M ; and, looking back, he recalls, in
a passage of great general as well as personal
interest, the splendid visionary enthusiasm of
that wonderful era of faith and happiness.

O pleasant exercise of hope and joy 1
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, us who were strong in love I
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very Heaven I 0 times,

In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance !

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights
When most intent on making of herself
A prime enchantress — to assist the work,

Which then was going forward in her name 1
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole Earth,

The beauty wore of promise — that which sets
(As at some moments might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of Paradise itself)

The budding rose above the rose full blown.

What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of ? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away !

They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,

1 •* The Prelude," ix. 431-501.

44

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

The play-fellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers, — who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,

And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As il they had within some lurking right
To wield it ; — they, too, who of gentle mood
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves ; —

Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their hearts’ desire,

And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish, —
Were called upon to exercise their skill,

Not in Utopia, — subterranean fields, —

Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where I
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,— the place where, in the end,

We find our happiness, or not at all 1 1

Wordsworth returned to Paris — 44 the fierce
metropolis ” — in October 1792, a month only
after the September massacres. He had now
come to believe that the salvation of France
depended upon the Girondins, and lamenting
their want of a vigorous policy, was on the
point, despite the personal dangers to be in-
curred, of throwing in his lot with them. By
this time, however, his relatives at home were
becoming seriously alarmed on his own account,
and felt it necessary to interfere. In his poetic
record he speaks vaguely of having been
“ dragged ” away from France “ by a chain of

* "The Prelude,” xi. 105-145.

45

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

harsh necessity. * * The crude fact is that his sup-
plies were now cut off. . It was well for Words-
worth and for us that he was thus compelled to
return to England, and he himself afterwards
acknowledged thankfully that what seemed
“harsh necessity” was really “the gracious
providence of Heaven.” Had he been allowed
his own way, he would almost certainly have
perished at the hands of the Jacobins in the
general destruction of the Brissotin party.

V

I N England he found conservative opinion
running strongly against the Revolution,
the defence of which he accordingly
undertook in a letter to the Bishop of Llandaff.
One argument which he was accustomed to use
at this time, to the effect that the abuses which
attended the popular upheaval should really be
regarded as an evil heritage of the past, he
afterwards restated in “ The Prelude ” :

When a taunt

Was taken up by scoffers in their pride,

Saying, “ Behold the harvest that we reap
From popular government and equality,”

I clearly saw that neither these nor aught
Of wild belief engrafted on their names
By false philosophy had caused the woe,

But a terrific reservoir of guilt

And ignorance filled up from age to age,

That could no longer hold its loathsome charge,

But burst and spread in deluge through the land . 1

» “The Prelude," x. 470-480

46

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

For the moment he thus stood firm in his
revolutionary faith. But before long he found
himself involved in a fierce struggle of con-
flicting motives. Pitt’s declaration of war
against France was a terrible shock to him —
the first great shock his moral nature had ever
received. He loved his country, yet, convinced
that his country was now in the wrong, he felt
himself compelled to rejoice when disaster
overtook the British arms. Then came the
Reign of Terror, which overwhelmed him with
despair, and the ghastly thought of which long
afterwards continued to torture him by day and
to haunt his dreams by night. His hopes
revived a little when news came of the fall of
Robespierre . 1 But it was only for a brief time.
The further course of events in France quickly
alienated his sympathies, and when the Republic,
still professing to act upon the principles of
liberty, equality, and fraternity, entered upon a
policy of military aggression, his “ genial
feelings ” were turned to bitterness. For a
time, even though France had failed him, he
clung desperately to the abstract political
theories behind the revolutionary movement ;
deeply influenced in this, like many of his con-
temporaries, by the teachings of that remarkable
man, William Godwin, in his ** Enquiry concern-
ing Political J ustice. ’ ’ But he found little com-
fort in abstractions amid the wreck of concrete
hopes. Little by little he began to recognize
that he was on the wrong path. There was

* "The Prelude,” z. 553-575.

47

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Yet though Dorothy’s influence was un-
doubtedly the most powerful personal factor in
Wordsworth’s restoration to spiritual health,
that of Mary Hutchinson must not be forgotten.

She came, no more a phantom to adorn
A moment, but an inmate of the heart,

And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined
To penetrate the lofty and the low ;

Even as one essence of pervading light
Shines, in the brightest of ten thousand stars
And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp
Couched in the dewy grass . 1

These lines recall the exquisite little poem
which Wordsworth wrote about Mary two years
after their marriage :

She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight ;

A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament j
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair ;

Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair ;

But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn ;

A dancing Shape, an Image gay,

To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

I saw her upon nearer view,

A Spirit, yet a Woman too I

Her household motions light and free,

And steps of virgin-liberty ;

A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet ;

i nij, e Prelude," xiv. 268-375.

.49

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food ;

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine ;

A Being breathing thoughtful breath,

A Traveller between life and death ;

The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ;

A perfect Woman, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command ;

And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.

VI

I N February 1794 Wordsworth wrote to a
friend : “ I have been doing nothing,

and still continue to do nothing. What
is to become of me I know not. ” The statement
that he had been doing nothing is not strictly
correct. He had been doing something — he had
made a definite start as a poet with the publica-
tion the preceding year of two poems “ An
Evening Walk ” and “ Descriptive Sketches.”
The former deals with the landscape of the
familiar region round Hawkshead and Amble-
side, though as Wordsworth was careful to
note, it was not “ confined to a particular walk
or an individual place — a proof (of which I was
unconscious at the time) of my unwillingness
to submit the poetic spirit to the chains of fact
50

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

and mere circumstance.” 1 The latter is com-
posed of scenes from his ” pedestrian tour
among the Alps with Robert Jones,” to whom
it is dedicated. Both poems are in the orthodox
“ classic ” couplet ; and in both there is much
to remind us of the current poetic style. Such
a passage as this, for example, from “ An
Evening Walk,” is unmistakably reminiscent
of Goldsmith :

Far from my dearest Friend, ’tis mine to rove
Through bare grey dell, high wood, and pastoral cove ;
Where Derwent rests, and listens to the roar
That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore ;

Where peace to Grasmere’s lonely island leads,

To willowy hedge-rows, and to emerald meads ;

Leads to her bridge, rude church, and cottaged grounds,
Her rocky sheepwalks, and her woodland bounds ;
Where, undisturbed by winds, Winander sleeps
’Mid clustering isles, and holly-sprinkled steeps ;
Where twilight glens endear my Esthwaite’s shore,
And memory of departed pleasures, more.

It is only when we read these poems more
closely that we are able to detect beneath their
conventional mannerisms a certain distinctive

> It should never be forgotten that, notwithstanding his minute attention
to fact, Wordsworth was opposed to anything approaching photographic
literalism in descriptive poetry. Aubrey de Vere records a conversation
with him in which he emphatically condemned the ultra-realistic method of
poets who went to nature with "pencil and notebook, and jotted down

whatever struck them most." Nature, he declared, “ does not permit an

inventory to be made of her charms.’ ’ The poet should leave pencil and note-

book at home ; and, as he walks, should fix his eye with a reverent attention
upon the things about him. Afterwards he would find that he had forgotten

much ; but “ that which remained, the picture surviving in the mind, would

have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene. ... In every

scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental.'’

SI

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

and personal quality, particularly in their
handling of nature. Both contain a large
amount of carefully accumulated detail, while
the specific character of the descriptions brings
them into sharp contrast with the common class
of eighteenth-century landscape verse. This is
a point upon which long afterwards Words-
worth himself laid great stress. The eighteenth-
century poet had been satisfied as a rule with
vague generalizations. He, on the contrary,
had endeavoured to “look steadily” at his
subject and to reproduce the essential features
of what he had seen. Speaking of “An
Evening Walk,” he said : “There is not an
image in it which I have not observed ; and
now, in my seventy-third year, I recollect the
time and place where most of them were
noticed.” It is such direct and intimate render-
ing of nature which gives prophetic interest to
this otherwise rather imitative early work.
Take, for instance, the two lines which he
himself picked out as marking a stage in his
poetic development :

And, fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines

Its darkening boughs and leaves, in stronger lines.

On casual perusal this couplet may not
appear in the least remarkable. Wordsworth's
comment brings out its significance. “ This is
feebly and imperfectly expressed, but I recollect
distinctly the very spot where this first struck
me. It was on the way between Hawkshead
and Ambleside, and gave me extreme pleasure.
52

WORDSWORTH G? HIS POETRY

The moment was important in my poetical
history, for I date from it my consciousness of
the infinite variety of natural appearances which
had been unnoticed by the poets of any age or
country, so far as I was acquainted with them,
and I made a resolution to supply, in some
degree, the deficiency.” Pope, with Walsh’s
aid, early learned that it was his mission to be a
“ correct ” poet. Wordsworth, prompted by
his own native genius, resolved in youth that
he would become an interpreter of nature.

These poems attracted no attention, though
at Cambridge they were read by Coleridge, who
perceived in them the sign cf fresh and original
power. 1 From the point of view of profit or
advancement, therefore, they might just as well
have been kept in manuscript. Otherwise his
outlook remained absolutely blank. There was
thus good reason for his disquietude. He
thought for a time of seeking an opening in
journalism, and even of starting on his own
account a monthly magazine, of mildly republi-
can colour, to be called “The Philanthropist.”
This, however, was never anything more than
a dream. Restless, full of vague longings, but
without definite plan or purpose, he continued
to lead “ an undomestic wanderer’s life,”
partly in London, partly among ** rural
England’s cultivated vales and Cambrian soli-
tudes." 2 Then suddenly the pressing problem
of his future- was solved for him. Early in
179S a young friend, Raisley Calvert, died of

» *' The Prelude,” xiii. 333 - 365 . * fMi. xHi. 35»-354>

53

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

consumption, leaving him a legacy of £900,
together with a message that he did so believing
that, relieved from immediate anxieties and
free to devote himself to literature, Wordsworth
might use his powers and attainments for the
benefit of mankind. By this thoughtful act his
friend “ cleared a passage ” for him, and
allowed the stream of his life to flow “ in the
bent of nature.” Wordsworth was of course
deeply moved, and some years later he enshrined
his gratitude in the following beautiful sonnet :

TO THE MEMORY OF RAISLEY CALVERT 1
Calvert 1 it must not be unheard by them
Who may respect my name, that I to thee
Owed many years of early liberty.

This care was thine when sickness did condemn
Thy youth to hopeless wasting, root and stem —
That I, if frugal and severe, might stray
Where’er I liked ; and finally array
My temples with the Muse’s diadem.

Hence, if in freedom I have loved the truth ;

If there be aught of pure, or good, or great,

In my past verse ; or shall be, in the lays
Of higher mood, which now I meditate ; —

It gladdens me, 0 worthy, short-lived, Youth !

To think how much of this will be thy praise.

The legacy was not large, but to Wordsworth
it spelt independence. He sent at once for
Dorothy, and brother and sister, who thereafter
were always to live together till the former’s
death, started joint housekeeping at Racedown

1 Cp. " The Prelude," xiv. 348-369,

54

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Lodge, Dorsetshire, among the hills between
Crewkeme and Lyme Regis. The place was
lent to them, rent-free, by a Mr. Pinney of
Bristol, a friend of Basil Montagu, who had
known Wordsworth at Cambridge. Montagu
also sent his little son to Racedown as Words-
worth’s pupil, and this made a welcome addition
to their slender income. Altogether, as Dorothy
wrote to a friend, they had now between £70
and £80 a year to live on.

They stayed at Racedown nearly two years,
leading a life of primitive simplicity, reading,
writing, gardening, and taking long walks
together amid the beautiful Dorset scenery :
“as happy,” Dorothy declared, “as human
beings can be.” This was the period of
Wordsworth’s recovery from the reaction which
had followed upon the collapse of his revolu-
tionary hopes. Through many hours of quiet
intercourse with his sister and of solitary com-
munings with nature and his own soul, the
confidence he had lost in life’s divine purpose
and meaning came back to him, and with it
peace and joy. In the fourth book of “ The
Excursion ” — “ Despondency Corrected ” — he
speaks at length through the mouth of the
Wanderer of the influences which had been
most potent in this restoration, and emphasizes
in particular the primary importance of that
religious faith which he had now regained :

“ One adequate support
For the calamities of mortal life
Exists — one only ; an assured belief

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

That the procession of our fate, howe’er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power ;

Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.

— The darts of anguish fix not where the seat
Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified
By acquiescence in the Will supreme
For time and for eternity ; by faith,

Faith absolute in God, including hope,

And the defence that lies in boundless love
Of his perfections ; with habitual dread
Of aught unworthily conceived, endured
Impatiently, ill-done, or left undone,

To the dishonour of his holy name.

Soul of our Souls, and safeguard of the world l
Sustain, thou only canst, the sick of heart ;

Restore their languid spirits, and recall
Their lost affections unto thee and thine I ”
During these two years, while he laid up
much material for future use, Wordsworth
produced but little. But he worked at a
tragedy entitled “The Borderers,” which was
later very properly rejected by the managers of
Covent Garden as “ not calculated for the stage,”
and wrote two narrative poems, “ Guilt and
Sorrow” and “Margaret, or The Ruined
Cottage.” The former, a gloomy tale told in
Spenserian stanzas, is chiefly interesting because,
like a great deal of other literature inspired by
the humanitarian spirit of the revolutionary
age, it treats of the wrongs suffered by the poor
at the hands of constituted society. The latter,
which was afterwards incorporated in the open-

56

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

ing book of “ The Excursion,” is the first piece
of work done by Wordsworth which gave any
clear indication of his characteristic powers.

The beginning of his friendship with Coleridge
dates from this time. That brilliant genius and
weak-willed dreamer had already commenced
his fatal course of drifting, and now drifted to
Racedown, the inmates of which he took by
storm. Dorothy instantly discovered that he
was “ a wonderful man.” At first indeed she
thought him plain, with his pale face, wide
mouth, flabby lips, indifferent teeth, and
“longish, loose-flowing, half-curling, rough
black hair.” But the moment he began to
talk his expression changed, his grey eyes
lighted up with celestial fire, and all his physical
peculiarities were forgotten under the magic of
his eloquence. He and Wordsworth quickly
found that they were brothers in spirit, and at
once began to exchange confidences. “ The
first thing that was read after he came,”
Dorothy tells us, “ was William’s new poem,
‘Ruined Cottage,’ with which he was much
delighted ; and after tea he repeated to us two
acts and a half of his tragedy, * Osorio.’ The
next morning William read his tragedy ‘ The
Borderers ’ ” — which, it is surprising to learn,
Coleridge compared favourably with the work
of Shakespeare . 1 Thus a new influence was
introduced into Wordsworth’s life which, accord-
ing to his own statement, was second only to
that of his sister.

1 See bis letter to Cottle, June 1797, in " Letters of Coleridge,” izzi.

57

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

TO MY SISTER

It is the first mild day of March :

Each minute sweeter than before,

The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,

Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

My sister 1 (’tis a wish of mine)

Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign ;
Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you and, pray,
Put on with speed your woodland dress ;
And bring no book : for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar :

We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.

Love, now a universal birth,

From heart to heart is stealing,

From earth to man, from man to earth :
— It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason :

Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Some silent laws our hearts will make,

Which they shall long obey :

We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,

We’ll frame the measure of our souls :

They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister I come, I pray,

With speed put on your woodland dress ;

And bring no book : for this one day
We’ll give to idleness.

The second poem is not marked by the same
abandonment of mind. The poet, brooding in
solitude, is touched by the thought of the
sufferings of humanity, and the note of sadness
steals in as he contrasts “ Nature's holy plan ”
with “ what man has made of man.” It was
’‘actually composed ” while he “was sitting
by the side of the brook that runs . . . through
the grounds of Alfoxden.” This Alfoxden dell,
he says, was one of his chosen resorts. It was
a chosen resort also of Coleridge, who describes
it in his poem, “ This Lime Tree Bower my
Prison,” written while Charles Lamb was on a
visit to Nether Stowey.

LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING
I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

do

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran ;

And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths ;

And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played.

Their thoughts I cannot measure : —

But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,

To catch the breezy air ;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent.

If such be Nature's holy plan,

Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man ?

Coleridge’s society, which, as Dorothy said,
had been the '* principal inducement ” to the
settlement at Alfoxden, proved a great stimulus
to Wordsworth’s genius during the eleven
memorable months of their residence there.
*' We arc,” Coleridge declared, “ three people
with only one soul ” — it is a pity that the
spiritual brotherhood was not a quartette instead
of a trio ; but poor Mrs. Coleridge did not seem
to count. In their long walks together over

61

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

hill and through wood, and in their many happy
days of companionship, now at Alfoxden and
now at Stowey, the talk of the two young men
ran incessantly upon poetry, and many big
plans of work were discussed which were
destined to come to nothing : Coleridge, then
as always, being specially fertile in schemes
which were never to be carried out. One enter-
prise, however, arose out of their intercourse
which, though apparently not in the least big,
was fraught with immense consequences for
literature. This was the production of the
slender volume entitled “ Lyrical Ballads,” the
publication of which is rightly regarded as
opening a new chapter in the history of English
poetry.

The origin of “ Lyrical Ballads ” is described
by Coleridge in a passage which, well known as
it is, must here be quoted once again.

During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I
were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently
on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of
exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful
adherence to the truth of nature and the power of
giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours
of imagination. . i . The thought suggested itself
(to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems
might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the
incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, super-
natural ; and the excellence aimed at was to consist
in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic
truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany
such situations, supposing them real. . . . For the
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary
life ; the characters and incidents were to be such as
will be found in every village and its vicinity where
there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after
them, or to notice them when they present them-
selves.

In this idea originated the plan of the ** Lyrical
Ballads,” in which it was agreed that my endeavours
should be directed to persons and characters super-
natural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer
from our inward nature a human interest and a
semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these
shadows of imagination that willing suspension of
disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic
faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to
propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of
novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling
analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the
mind's attention to the lethargy of custom and directing
it to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us :
an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in conse-
quence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude,
we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and
hearts that neither feel nor understand . 1

This passage enables us to appreciate the
epoch-making character of the little book. It
marks the culmination and the confluence of
two tendencies which had been growing side by
side during the later eighteenth century : the
tendency towards romance, on the one hand,
and, on the other, that towards naturalism, or
simplicity in theme and treatment. With
Coleridge’s own contribution to the joint under-

1 " Bioeraphia Literaria, chap. dr.

63

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

taking we have now nothing to do. Our con-
cern is with Wordsworth’s share, and particu-
larly, for the moment, with such poems as
“The Idiot Boy,” “We are Seven,” “The
Thorn,” and “Goody Blake and Harry Gill,”
which were designed as experiments in the
poetical rendering of subjects hitherto deemed
beneath the dignity of the muse.

“The principal object, then, proposed in
these poems,” Wordsworth wrote two years
later, “ was to choose incidents and situations
from common life, and to relate or describe
them throughout, as far as was possible, in a
selection of language actually used by men, and,
at the same time, to throw over them a certain
cblouring of imagination, whereby ordinary
things should be presented to the mind in an
unusual aspect ” ; and he goes on to explain
that “ humble and rustic life was generally
chosen, because in that condition the essential
passions of the heart find a better soil in which
they can attain their maturity, and are less
under restraint, and speak a plainer and more
emphatic language ; because in that condition
of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a state
of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may
be more accurately contemplated and more
forcibly communicated ; because the manners
of rural life germinate from these elementary
feelings, and, from the necessary character ol
rural occupations, are more easily compre-
hended, and are more durable ; and, lastly,
because in that condition the passions of men
64

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

are incorporated with the beautiful and per-
manent forms of nature.” 1

In this remarkable declaration of faith there
are many matters worthy of attention. I will
here touch upon.two only.

The first is the emphasis thrown upon the
elementary character of the subjects dealt with.
Whether Wordsworth was right or wrong in
contending that essential humanity flourishes
more fully in the country than in the city, and
among the humble classes than in circles of
greater refinement and culture, we need not
now consider. The point to seize is, his desire
to penetrate through the artificial trappings and
transitory interests of civilization to that which
is common to men as men and belongs to the
permanent foundations of human life.

Then, secondly, there is his determination to
bring the language of poetry back to naturalness
and simplicity. Here he is in open revolt
against the fashionable practice of the followers
of the Augustan school, with their conventional
mannerisms, their pompous circumlocutions,
“ their gaudiness and inane phraseology.” In
his attack upon the stereotyped formalism and
empty rhetoric by which English poetry had
long been vitiated Wordsworth obviously carried
reaction a great deal too far. Poetry, according
to his theory, should be written, as far as
possible (it is unfortunate that he did not
attempt to measure the saving grace of this

• Preface to second edition of "Lyrical Ballads,” 1800 . Cp. "Tlie Ex-
cursion," L 343-347*

B 65

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

qualification), in the simplest language of
ordinary rustic folk — or, to be exact, in a
selection of such language. It was, we must
suppose, in the pursuit of this theory, unchecked
by any sense of humour, that he was led to
perpetrate those deplorable puerilities which gave
the unregenerate occasion to scoff ,* as when he
wrote of “ Simon Lee” :

For still, the more he works, the more
Do his weak ankles swell ;

and of Poor Betty :

This piteous news so much it shocked her,

She quite forgot to send the doctor
To comfort poor old Susan Gale.

Theory, too, must be held responsible for the
dreadful ineptitude of “ We are Seven,” for the
“Idiot Boy,” for “The Thorn,” for “Goody
Blake and Harry Gill ” :

Oh 1 what’s the matter ? what’s the matter ?
What is’t that ails young Harry Gill ?

That evermore his teeth they chatter,

Chatter, chatter, chatter still 1
Of waistcoats Harry has no lack,

Good duffle grey, and flannel fine ;

He has a blanket on his back,

And coats enough to smother nine.

In March, December, and in July,

'Tis all the same with Harry Gill ;

The neighbours tell, and tell you truly,

His teeth they chatter, chatter still.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

At night, at morning, and at noon,

’Tis all the same with Harry Gill ;

Beneath the sun, beneath the moon,

His teeth they chatter, chatter still 1

Young Harry was a lusty drover,

And who so stout of limb as he ?

His cheeks were red as ruddy clover ;

His voice was like the voice of three.

Old Goody Blake was old and poor ;

111 fed she was, and thinly clad ;

And any man who passed her door
Might see how poor a hut she had.

All day she spun in her poor dwelling :

And then her three hours’ work at night,

Alas I ’twas hardly worth the telling,

It would not pay for candle-light.

Remote from sheltered village-green,

On a hill's northern side she dwelt,

Where from sea-blasts the hawthorns lean.
And hoary dews are slow to melt.

By the same fire to boil their pottage,

Two poor old Dames, as I have known,

Will often live in one small cottage ;

But she, poor Woman 1 housed alone.

’Twas well enough when summer came,

The long, warm, lightsome summer-day,

Then at her door the caniy Dame
Would sit, as any linnet, gay.

But when the ice our streams did fetter,

Oh then how her old bones would shake 1
You would have said, if you had met her,
’Twas a hard time for Goody Blake.

67

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Her evenings then were dull and dead :

Sad case it was, as you may think,

For very cold to go to bed ;

And then for cold not sleep a wink.

0 joy for her 1 whene’er in winter
The winds at night had made a rout ;

And scattered many a lusty splinter
And many a rotten bough about
Yet never had she, well or sick,

As every man who knew her says,

A pile beforehand, turf or stick,

Enough to warm her for three days.

Such flat and trivial writing as this may of
course be held to represent the abuse of Words-
worth’s doctrine. But as Coleridge conclusively
showed in his masterly inquiry into the whole
subject, that doctrine itself is radically unsound ;
since the language of poetry can never be
identical with that of actual life in Words-
worth’s narrow acceptation of the phrase, nor,
certainly, is the best language for poetic pur-
poses to be found on the lips of unlettered
rustics . 1 Hence it is fortunate that, save in a
few poems which were written expressly to
illustrate but which in fact disproved them,
formulated theories had little influence upon his
own production. It is not by reference to his
doctrine, as Mr. Myers has said, that the merits
of his poetry are to be explained. Indeed we
may go farther than this. Wordsworth often

1 "Blographia Literaria,” chap. s?U. Coleridge was quite right in
protesting against Wordsworth’s critical phraseology os *' equivocal."

63

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Tcrote superbly ; and he often wrote in a stiff,
heavy, pedestrian style. But neither in the one
case nor in the other had doctrine anything to
do with the quality of his work.

That doctrine is none the less of great im-
portance on both historic and personal grounds.
Apart from the fact that it helped to break down
a vicious tradition and to reassert the claims of
simplicity and truth, it is particularly note-
worthy because, like the closely connected
theory of the proper subject-matter of poetry,
it brings into prominence the essentially demo-
cratic character of Wordsworth’s genius and
aims. He had by this time rejected root and
branch his early revolutionary creed, and
reaction against that creed was presently to
carry him, as we shall see in due course, to
extreme conservatism. Yet his work still re-
mains a part of the great revolutionary move-
ment of the age. That movement was inspired
by men’s growing impatience of artifice, con-
vention, and shams, by a desire to get “ back to
nature ” — to fact and reality — and by an ever-
widening sense of the value of that fundamental
manhood which underlies all class distinctions
and is one and the same in lettered and un-
lettered, in peer and ploughman. When Words-
worth declared that his chosen theme was to be
“no other than the very heart of man ” and
“men as they are men within themselves ,” 1
when he sought his types of strong and noble
character in the Cumberland shephard, the

* *' The Prelude," xiii. *31 B.

69

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

pedlar, the leech-gatherer, he stood out as the
poetic interpreter of the new democratic faith.
When he conceived it as his chief mission,
following the lead of nature herself, to conse-
crate common things and “breathe grandeur
upon the very humblest face of human life,” 1
it was of this democratic faith that he was the
mouthpiece and apostle. The tender feeling
which overflowed from man to the lower
animals, and moved him to think of the slain
hart as part of the great brotherhood of God’s
creatures, was another aspect of the same faith.

Grey-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well ;
Small difference lies between thy creed and mine :
This Beast not unobserved by Nature fell ;

His death was mourned by sympathy divine.

The Being, that is in the clouds and air,

That is in the green leaves among the groves,
Maintains a deep and reverential care
For the unoffending creatures whom he loves.

The pleasure-house is dust behind, before,

This is no common waste, no common gloom ;

But Nature, in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.

She leaves these objects to a slow decay,

That what we are, and have been, may be known ;
But at the coming of the milder day,

These monuments shall all be overgrown.

» «< The Prelude,” adii. 279 fi.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,

Taught both by what she shows, and what conceals ;
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. 1
So again with his extravagant theories of
poetic style. The language of poetry had long
been the language of a caste. In his heroic
attempt to break down the barriers of so-called
art and to make poetry speak once more with
the tongue of common men, the democratic
inspiration is once more apparent.

VIII

O N June 26, 1798, the Wordsworths left
Alfoxden, and after a short stay in
Bristol, where their friend Joseph
Cottle, the publisher, was busy with the 1 ‘ Lyrical
Ballads,” they set out on a walking tour along
the banks of the Wye. That tour is memorable
because it produced one of the greatest of
Wordsworth’s poems, the

LINES

COMPOSED A FEW MILES ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY, ON
REVISITING THE BANKS OF THE WYE DURING A TOUR.

JULY 13, 1798

Five years have past ; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters I and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. — Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion ; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,

Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
’Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild : these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door ; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees 1
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,

Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

These beauteous forms.
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye :

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart ;

And passing even into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration : feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps,

As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,

His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,

To them I may have owed another gift,

Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on, —

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul :

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

If this

Be but a vain belief, yet, oh 1 how oft —

In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight ; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,

Have hung upon the beatings of my heart —

How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,

0 sylvan Wye 1 thou wanderer thro’ the woods,

How often has my spirit turned to thee I

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again :

While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when
first

1 came among these hills ; when like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,

Wherever nature led : more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,

And their glad animal movements all gone by)

To me was all in all.— I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite ; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.— That time is past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,

And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur ; other gifts
Have followed ; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains ; and of all that we behold
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, both what they half create,

And what perceive ; well pleased to recognise

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance,

If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay :

For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river ; thou my dearest Friend,

My dear, dear Friend ; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh 1 yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,

My dear, dear Sister 1 and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege,

Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy : for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ;

And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee : and, in after years,

When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure ; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,

Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

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For all sweet sounds and harmonies ; oh 1 then,

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

And these my exhortations I Nor, perchance —

If I should be where I no more can hear

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams

Of past existence — wilt thou then forget

That on the banks of this delightful stream

We stood together ; and that I, so long

A worshipper of Nature, hither came

Unwearied in that service : rather say

With warmer love — oh I with far deeper zeal

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,

That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,

And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake !

With this wonderful poem before Us we may
conveniently pause in our story to return to a
subject already opened up — Wordsworth’s inter-
pretation of nature.

It is important first of all to recall and still
further to specify the change which came over
his relations with nature as his knowledge of
life deepened and the “mellower years”
brought him “ the philosophic mind.” Three
stages in the growth of his love of nature are,
as will be observed, marked out in the foregoing
lines, which indeed state briefly what is set forth
at much greater length in “ The Prelude.”
First came, as we have already seen, the stage
in which the love of nature was, as I put it,
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

simply a healthy boy’s delight in freedom and
the open air. Then followed that intermediate
period in which the sensuous beauty of nature
was loved with an unreflecting passion alto-
gether untouched by intellectual interests or
associations — the kind of passion which found
such full expression in the poetry of Keats . 1
Yet even this stage proved to be one of transition
only. He passed beyond it, finding “ abundant
recompense ” for whatever he may have lost
by the way, into a mood of mind in which his
love became profoundly religious in character.
Here it is that we reach the distinctive quality
in Wordsworth’s nature poetry. Ardent devo-
tion to natural beauty ; keenness of observa-
tion ; unfailing accuracy in the rendering of
even the minutest details : these of course are
important elements in his work. But they are
not the most important. The essentially Words-
worthian feature of his treatment of nature is
his intense spirituality.

We must not, however, suppose that though
the “ aching joys ” and “ dizzy raptures ” of
former years were now “ no more,” this
intense spirituality was destructive of his simple
delight in nature as nature. Aubrey de Vere
has said that Wordsworth looked at nature as
the mystic of old perused the page of Holy Writ,
making little of the letter, but passing through
it to the spiritual interpretation . 2 The state-

1 Cp. my •* Keats and his Foetiy," In this series, pp. 35, 36,

• “On the Personal Character of Wordsworth’s Poetry,” in *' Words-
worthiana,” p. 147- •

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

ment is rather misleading. It cannot surely be
maintained that Wordsworth made little of the
letter. If the primrose by the river’s brim was
for him the symbol and index of divine things,
it did not therefore cease to be the primrose.
The spiritual meaning was added to the natural
beauty, not substituted for it. As an expression
of pure delight in such natural beauty the
following verses could not easily be surpassed
by any poet :

“I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD”
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils, ;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay :

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced ; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee :

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company :

I gazed— and gazed— but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought ;

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

For oft, when on my couch I He
In vacant or in pensive mood,

• They flash upon that inward eye\ 1
Which is the Miss of solitude ; J
And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

At the same time Aubrey de Vere is right in
speaking of Wordsworth as a mystic, and his
mysticism is such a fundamental and pervading
element in his thought that it must be con-
sidered very carefully. Thoroughly anti-scien-
tific and anti-rationalistic in temper, he was in
radical opposition to all forms of philosophy
which assume that the intellect is the only
organ of truth. This is brought out clearly,
for instance, in

A POET’S EPITAPH
Art thou a Statist in the van
Of public conflicts trained and bred ?

—First learn to love one living man ;

Then may’st thou think upon the dead.

A Lawyer art thou ?— draw not nigh I
Go, carry to some fitter place
The keenness of that practised eye,

The hardness of that sallow face.

Art thou a Man of purple cheer ?

A rosy Man, right plump to see ?

Approach ; yet, Doctor, not too near,

This grave no cushion is for thee.

■ According to Wordsworth’s own statement these two lines were eontri-
bnted by his wile.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Or art thou one of gallant pride,

A Soldier and no man of chaff ?

Welcome I — but lay thy sword aside,

And lean upon a peasant’s staff.

Physician art thou ? one, all eyes,

Philosopher I a fingering slave,

One that would peep and botanise
Upon his mother’s grave ?

Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,

O turn aside, — and take, I pray,

That he below may rest in peace,

Thy ever-dwindling soul, away I

A Moralist perchance appears ;

Led, Heaven knows how ! to this poor sod :

And he has neither eyes nor ears ;

Himself his world, and his own God ;

One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling
Nor form, nor feeling, great or small ;

A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,

An intellectual All-in-all 1

Shut close the door ; press down the latch ;

Sleep in thy intellectual crust ;

Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch
Near this unprofitable dust.

But who is He, with modest looks,

And clad in homely russet brown ?

He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

He is retired as noontide dew,

Or fountain in a noon-day grove ;

And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth,

Of hill and valley, he has viewed ;

And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,—

The harvest of a quiet eye

That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

But he is weak ; both Man and Boy,

Hath been an idler in the land ;

Contented if he might enjoy
The things which others understand.

—Come hither in thy hour of strength ;

Come, weak as is a breaking wave 1
Here stretch thy body at full length ;

Or build thy house upon this grave.

Thus there was for Wordsworth a world of
divine reality behind and within the ordinary
world of observation and experience — a world
to which mere reason would never give access,
but which was nevertheless open to the spiritual
faculty in man. Hints from this world come
to us from beyond the regions of time and
sense.

' WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

YES, IT WAS THE MOUNTAIN ECHO

Yes, it was the mountain Echo,

Solitary, clear, profound,

Answering to the shouting Cuckoo,

Giving to her sound for sound 1

Unsolicited reply

To a babbling wanderer sent ;

Like her ordinary cry,

Like— but oh, how different l
Hears not also mortal Life ?

Hear not we, unthinking Creatures !

Slaves of folly, love, or strife —

Voices of two different natures ?

Have not we too ?— yes, we have
Answers, and we know not whence ;

Echoes from beyond the grave,

Recognised intelligence 1
Such rebounds our inward ear
Catches sometimes from afar —

Listen, ponder, hold them dear ;

For of God,— of God they are.

With these simple, yet pregnant, lines we
may compare the more elaborate statement of
the same thought in the following passage from
the fourth book of “The Excursion.” The
argument, as such, is of course invalidated by
the fact that its basis is a mere illusion. But
this for the moment does not matter.

I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear

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The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ;

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy ; for from within were heard
I-Iurmurings, whereby the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.

Even such a shell the universe itself

Is to the ear of Faith ; and there are times,

I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things ;

Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power ;

And central peace, subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation. Here you stand,

Adore, and worship, when you know it not ;

Pious beyond the intention of your thought ;
Devout above the meaning of your will.

Now for Wordsworth it is because of the
essential kinship between the spiritual faculty
in man and the indwelling soul of the universe
— because “ the external World ” and the Mind
are “ exquisitely ” fitted each to the other i —
that communion with nature is possible, and
that through such communion we find, as Mr.
Myers has put it, “ an opening, if indeed there
be any opening, into the transcendent world.”
To grasp this point is to have the key to Words-
worth’s entire interpretation of nature ; to
miss it, is to miss everything that is most
characteristic in that interpretation. But, as it
is further necessary to realize, spiritual com-
munion with nature is possible only on condition

* “The Excursion, " Introduction, 62-71.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

*' You look round on your Mother Earth,

As if she for no purpose bore you ;

As if you were her first-born birth,

And none had lived before you I ”

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,

When life was sweet, I knew not why,

To me my good friend Matthew spake,

And thus I made reply :

“ The eye— it cannot choose but see ;

We cannot bid the ear be still ;

Our bodies feel, where’er they be,

Against or with our will.

“ Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress ;

That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

“ Think you, ’mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,

That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking ?

“—Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,

I sit upon this old grey stone,

And dream my time away.”

THE TABLES TURNED
Up 1 up l my Friend, and quit your books ;
Or surely you’ll grow double :

Up ,1 up 1 my Friend, and clear your looks ;
Why all this toil and trouble ?

8 S

WORDSWORTH & HIS POE

The sun, above the mountain’s head,

A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread.

His first sweet evening yellow.

Books 1 'tis a dull and endless strife ;

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music ! on my life.

There’s more of wisdom in it.

And hark 1 how blithe the throstle sings 1
He, too, is no mean preacher :

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless —

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,

Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good.

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art ;

Close up those barren leaves ;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

These poems undoubtedly contain high doc-
trine, and critics have not been wanting who
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

have accused Wordsworth of talking extrava-
gance if not downright nonsense in them.
Thus even Lord Morley dismisses impatiently
the particular philosophy of which they are the
vehicle : “no impulse from a vernal wood,”
he declares, “ can teach us anything at all of
moral evil and of good.” But before we charge
Wordsworth with absurdity it will be well to
make sure that we really understand his
position. Though his recoil from mere bookish-
ness manifestly prompted him to a too emphatic
and over-fanciful expression, I do not think he
meant that nature teaches better than books
the things which books teach. He meant that
if we go to nature in the right mood, and throw
ourselves open to her benign influences, we
shall gain through communion with her more
moral energy and more spiritual insight than
we can ever get from all the philosophies of the
schools, and that through such energy and
insight we shall obtain a clearer vision of good
and evil than mere knowledge will ever afford.
This indeed may not correspond with the
experience of the average man. But it did
correspond with Wordsworth’s, and for that
reason we must at least treat it with respect.

There is, however, another criticism which
may more justly be made upon Wordsworth’s
nature-poetry. It is that the view of nature
which he presents is uniformly one-sided.
Nature in his interpretation is always benignant.
He dwells invariably upon its beauty, its har-
mony, its peace. Of its indifference and cruelty

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

he sees nothing. “All which we behold ” is
for him “ full of blessings.” Nature never
brings to him, as it brought to Tennyson, “ evil
dreams ” ; he never realizes that it is “ red in
tooth and claw with ravine.” This incom-
pleteness of vision is at times a perverting factor
in his thought, for it leads him to a false
judgment of the relationship of nature and
humanity ; as when, in a poem recently
quoted, he finds in “Nature’s holy plan ” — a
plan which from the minutest beginnings of
life upward throughout its entire scale involves
wholesale and endless destruction — a condemna-
tion of the barbarities of man. In our reading
of Wordsworth allowance must always be made
for the fallacy which thus runs through much
of his poetry. Yet that fallacy itself throws a
wonderful light upon his character. Nature is
to us what we are to nature.

O Lady I we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does Nature live :

Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud I
And would we aught behold, of higher worth.
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-amdous crowd,

Ah I from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth —

And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element 1 1

Byron, being Byron, saw nature in the tumult

1 Coleridge ; “ Ode to Dejection."

88

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

of revolt. Wordsworth, being Wordsworth, found
in nature what he sought — the peace which was
in his own soul.

IX

O N September 14, 1798, a few days after the
publication of “Lyrical Ballads,”
Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge
left London for Germany ; Mrs. Coleridge being
left behind at Nether Stowey. At Hamburg,
where they met Klopstock, they passed some
time pleasantly enough. Then they parted
company ; Coleridge going on to Ratzeburg,
where amongst other things he proposed to
collect materials for a life of Lessing (never of
course to be written or even begun) ; the
Wordsworths settling in “ the romantic im-
perial town of Goslar,” where they took
lodgings over a draper’s shop. There they
remained till the spring of 1799, but their visit,
to which they had looked forward with the
keenest pleasure, proved a great disappointment.
Goslar was desperately dull ; they had little
society and made few acquaintances ; living
was much dearer than they had anticipated ;
and the winter was of such exceptional severity
that the people of the house fully expected the
poet to be frozen to death in his unceiled
bedroom. 1 It was on the whole a dreary time
for both of them. But Wordsworth was not
inactive, though it is significant that he was

1 See the lines " Written in Germany on One of the Coldest Days of the

89

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

generally inspired by reminiscence (as in
“Nutting,” which belongs to this period), and
not by the life about him. He now began “ The
Prelude ” and wrote two very distinctive narra-
tive poems, “ Lucy Gray ” and “ Ruth.”
Regarding the former, which I shall here quote,
Wordsworth said : “ The way in which the
incident was treated and the spiritualizing of
the character might furnish hints for contrasting
the imaginative influences which I have en-
deavoured to throw over common life with
Crabbe’s matter-of-fact style of treating subjects
of the same kind.” It must always be remem-
bered that it was part of Wordsworth’s aim to
deal faithfully with reality without allowing
fidelity to pass into the hard literalism of
Crabbe. The passage previously quoted from
the preface to the second edition of “ Lyrical
Ballads,” with its reference to the “ colouring
of imagination ” which he sought to throw over
his themes, has already made this clear ; while
Coleridge’s account of the “Lyrical Ballads”
touches, it will be remembered, upon the same
point.

LUCY GRAY
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:

And, when I crossed the wild,

I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew ;

She dwelt on a wide moor,

—The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door I

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

You yet may spy the fawn at play,

The hare upon the green ;

But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

" To-night will be a stormy night—

You to the town must go ;

And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow.”

" That, Father ! will I gladly do :

'Tis scarcely afternoon—

The minster-clock has just struck two.

And yonder is the moon 1 "

At this 'the Father raised his hook,

And snapped a faggot-band ;

He plied his work ; — and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand.

Not blither is the mountain roe :

With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,

That rises up like smoke.

The storm came on before its time :

She wandered up and down ;

And many a hill did Lucy climb :

But never reached the town.

The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide ;

But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.

9 *

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor ;

And thence they saw the bridge of wood,

A furlong from their door.

They wept — and, turning homeward, cried,

“ In heaven we all shall meet ; ”

— When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy’s feet.

Then downwards from the steep hill’s edge
They tracked the footmarks small ;

And through the broken hawthorn hedge.

And by the long stone-wall ;

And then an open held they crossed :

The marks were still the same ;

They tracked them on, nor ever lost ;

And to the bridge they came.

They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,

Into the middle of the plank ;

And further there were none !

—Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child ;

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.

O’er rough and smooth she trips along,

And never looks behind ;

And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

To this Goslar period also belongs the group
of exquisite lyrics, written early in 1799, which
we know collectively as the “ Lucy ” poems.
The genesis of these poems remains a mystery.
Habitually garrulous about everything con-
nected with his work, Wordsworth has told us
nothing about these, except that they were
composed in Germany, and one of them —
“ Three years she grew ” — in the Harz Forest.
Nor is information regarding them forthcoming
from any other quarter. Are they perhaps the
memorial, as the poet’s curious reticence might
seem to hint, of an episode which he chose to
keep secret? Or were the emotional experi-
ences portrayed merely fictitious ? Was there
ever any original of Lucy ? Or was she only
the creature of a tender fancy ? To these
questions there is no certain answer. This
much alone is beyond dispute, that they have a
delicate fragrance which is peculiarly their own,
and a note of passion which makes them unique
among Wordsworth’s works. Their own re-
straint is of course remarkable, and the note
of passion in them is manifestly very subdued.
Yet it is in reading them, perhaps, that we
can best understand a surprising remark which
the poet once made to Aubrey de Vere. Asked
by that friend why he had not written more
love-poems, he replied : “ Had I been a writer
of love-poetry it would have been 'natural to
me to write it with a degree of warmth
which could hardly have been approved by my
principles.”

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Strange fits of passion have I known :

And I will dare to tell,

But in the Lover’s ear alone,

What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,

I to her cottage bent my way,

Beneath an evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,

All over the wide lea ;

With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard-plot ;

And, as we climbed the hill,

The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot
Came near, and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,

Kind Nature’s gentlest boon I
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on ; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped :

When down behind the cottage roof,

At once, the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover’s head !

“ O mercy 1 ” to myself I cried,

“ If Lucy should be dead I ”■

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love :

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye 1

—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

. She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be ;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me I

I travelled among unknown men,

In lands beyond the' sea ;

Nor, England 1 did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.

’Tis past, that melancholy dream 1
Nor will I quit thy shore

A second time ; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel
The joy of my desire ;

And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played ;

And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy’s eyes surveyed.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Three years she grew in sun and shower,

Then Nature said, “ A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown ;

This Child I to myself will take ;

She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.

“ Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse : and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,

Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.

“ She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn,

Or up the mountain springs ;

And her’s shall be the breathing balm,

And her's the silence and the calm
Of mute insensate things.

“ The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her ; for her the willow bend ;

Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions of the Storm
Grace that shall mould the Maiden’s form
By silent sympathy.

“ The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her ; and she shall lean her car

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty bom of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.

96

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

new home on December 20, 1799. He has
described their arrival in the hard winter
weather :

Stem was the face of nature ; we rejoiced

In that stem countenance, for our souls thence drew

A feeling of their strength. The naked trees,

The icy brooks, as on we passed, appeared
To question us. “ Whence come ye, to what end ? ”
They seemed to say, ' * What would ye, ” said the shower,
“ Wild Wanderers, whither through my dark do- ‘
main ? 11

The sunbeam said, “ Be happy.” When this vale
We entered, bright and solemn was the sky
That faced us with a passionate welcoming,

And led us to our threshold. Daylight failed
Insensibly, and round us gently fell
Composing darkness, with a quiet load
Of full contentment, in a little shed
Disturbed, uneasy in itself as seemed,

And wondering at its new inhabitants.

It loves us now, this Vale so beautiful
Begins to love us ! by a sullen storm,

Two months unwearied of severest storm.

It put the temper of our minds to proof,

And found us faithful through the gloom, and heard
The poet mutter his prelusive songs
With cheerful heart, an unknown voice of joy
Among the silence of the woods and hills . 1

Dove Cottage, as their dwelling was called,
stands close to the road, with a garden and
orchard at the back, and behind these a steep
hill. A little “ semi- vestibule ” opens directly

1 “ The Recluse.”

9 S

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

on the living-room, which De Quincey described
as “ an oblong square, not above eight and a
hali feet high, sixteen feet long, and twelve
broad ; very prettily wainscoted from the floor
to the ceiling with dark polished oak, slightly
embellished with carving. One window there
was — a perfect and unpretending cottage win-
dow, with little diamond panes, embowered at
every season of the year with roses ; and in
the summer and autumn with a profusion of
jasmine and other fragrant shrubs. From the
exuberant luxuriance of the vegetation around
it, and from the dark hue of the wainscoting,
this v/indow, though tolerably large, did not
furnish a very powerful light.” On the ground
floor were the kitchen and Dorothy’s bedroom *
on the floor above, a little drawing-room over
the living-room, and Wordsworth’s bedroom
over his sister’s. The drawing-room was also
Wordsworth’s library. “ The two or three
hundred volumes,” writes De Quincey, “ occu-
pied a little, homely, painted bookcase, fixed
into one of two shallow recesses, formed on each
side of the fireplace by the projection of the
chimney. . . . They were ill-bound, or not
bound at all — in boards, sometimes in tatters ;
many were imperfect as to the number of
volumes, mutilated as to the number of pages ;
sometimes, where it seemed worth while, the
defects being supplied by manuscript ; some-
times not.” It is evident, De Quincey con-
tinues, that the owner of these books must
have had “independent sources of enjoyment
99

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

to fill up the major part of his time.” He was
not indeed a bookman at all, in the sense in
which his friend Southey, for example, was a
bookman ; “Books,” he once said of Southey,
“were in fact his fission; and wandering,
I can with truth affirm, was mine.” “Nine-
tenths of my verses,” he declared towards the
end of his life, ‘ ‘ have been murmured out in
the open air. One day a stranger, having walked
round the garden and grounds of Rydal Mount,
asked one of the female servants, who happened
to be at the door, permission to see her master’s
study. * This,’ said she, leading him forward,
‘ is my master’s library, where he keeps his
books, but his study is out of doors.’ After a
long absence from home it has more than once
happened that some one of my cottage neigh-
bours . . . has said, ‘ Well, there he is 1 we
are glad to hear him booing about again.’ ” 1

A few months after the settlement at Dove
Cottage, Wordsworth was busy with a second
edition of “Lyrical Ballads,” in two volumes,
with the famous polemical preface already
referred to. This, though always spoken of as
the edition of 1800, was actually published in
January 1801, and was followed by a third
edition in 1802 and a fourth in 1805. Perhaps
the most important new poem in the enlarged
collection is the one entitled “ Michael,” on
the whole the finest example of Wordsworth’s
narrative poetry of humble life. He called it

Cp. " and heard the poet muller his prelusive sonp " tn the pwif ;e
Just quoted from 11 The Recluse."

IOO

% jjaia. iwitesec

WORDSWORTH & H I £ P OpTMV; •

a “ pastoral poem,” thus chaKjmging 'rom-

p arisen with the conventional pfrstoralism, or . v .„

hopelessly unreal treatment of Shepher ds and. ,
the country, which had long beei^^^^rfSIoSs
tradition in literature. The story itself, he
explains, was the first of those “ domestic tales ”
of his native region which had interested him
even as a boy. “ Homely and rude ” he admits
it to be ; yet he proposes to tell it “ for the
delight of a few natural hearts,” and in the
firm conviction that the emotions may be
stirred without that “ outrageous stimulation ”
by sensational incident against which it was in
part the object of his preface to protest. “ I
have attempted,” he wrote to his friend Thomas
Poole, “to give a picture of a man of strong
mind and lively sensibility, agitated by two of
the most powerful affections of the human
heart — the parental affection and the love of
property, landed property, including the feelings
of inheritance, home, and personal and family
independence.” Michael himself, as he told
Charles James Fox, is in fact a kind of type
of those "statesmen,” or "independent pro-
prietors of land,” who “are now almost con-
fined to the north of England ” and “whose
little tract of land serves as a kind of rallying
point for their domestic feelings, as a tablet
upon which they are written, which makes
them objects of memory in a thousand instances,
when they would otherwise be forgotten;

This local feature in the poem must- not be'- ,■*
forgotten in the reading of it. i; / 1 .... \

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

MICHAEL

If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Greenhead Ghyll,

You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle ; in such bold ascent
The pastoral mountains front you, face to face.

But, courage I for around that boisterous brook
The mountains have all opened out themselves,

And made a hidden valley of their own.

No habitation can be seen ; but they
Who journey thither find themselves alone
With a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites
That overhead are sailing in the sky.

It is in truth an utter solitude ;

Nor should I have made mention of this Dell
But for one object which you might pass by,

Might see and notice not. Beside the brook
Appears a straggling heap of unhewn stones !

And to that simple object appertains
A story — unenriched with strange events,

Yet not unfit, I deem, for the fireside,

Or for the summer shade. It was the first
Of those domestic tales that spake to me
Of shepherds, dwellers in the valleys, men
Whom I already loved ; not verily
For their own sakes, but for the fields and hills.
Where was their occupation and abode.

And hence this Tale, while I was yet a Boy
Careless of books, yet having felt the power
Of Nature, by the gentle agency
Of natural objects, led me on to feel
For passions that were not my own, and think
(At random and imperfectly indeed)

On man, the heart of man, and human life.

X02

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Therefore, although it be a history
Homely and rude, I will relate the same
For the delight of a few natural hearts ;

And, with yet fonder feeling, for the sake
Of youthful Poets, who among these hills
Will be my second self when I am gone.

Upon the forest-side in Grasmere Vale
There dwelt a Shepherd, Michael was his name ;

An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb.

His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength : his mind was keen,

Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs,

And in his shepherd’s calling he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.

Hence had he learned the meaning of all winds,

Of blasts of every tone ; and, oftentimes,

When others heeded not, he heard the South
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills.

The Shepherd, at such warning, of his flock
Bethought him, and he to himself would say,

“ The winds are now devising work for me I "

And, truly, at all times, the storm, that drives
The traveller to a shelter, summoned him
Up to the mountains : he had been alone
Amid the heart of many thousand mists,

That came to him, and left him, on the heights.

So lived he till his eightieth year was past.

And grossly that man errs, who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the Shepherd's thoughts.
Fields, where with cheerful spirits he had breathed
The common air ; hills, which with vigorous step
He had so often climbed ; which had impressed
So many incidents upon his mind

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear ;

Which, like a book, preserved the memory
Of the dumb animals, whom he had saved,

Had fed or sheltered, linking to such acts
The certainty of honourable gain ;

Those fields, those hills— what could they less ? had
laid

Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love,

The pleasure which there is in life itself.

His days had not been passed in singleness.

His Helpmate was a comely matron, old —

Though younger than himself full twenty years.

She was a woman of a stirring life,

Whose heart was in her house : two wheels she
had

Of antique form ; this large, for spinning wool ;

That small, for flax ; and if one wheel had rest
It was because the other was at work.

The Pair had but one inmate in their house,

An only Child, who had been born to them
When Michael, telling o’er his years, began
To deem that he was old, — in shepherd’s phrase,

With one foot in the grave. This only Son,

With two brave sheep-dogs tried in many a storm,
The one of an inestimable worth,

Made all their household. I may truly say.

That they were as a proverb in the vale
For endless industry. When day was gone,

And from their occupations out of doors
The Son and Father were come home, even then,
Their labour did not cease ; unless when all
Turned to the cleanly supper-board, and there,

Each with a mess of pottage and skimmed milk,

Sat round the basket piled with oaten cakes,

104

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And their plain home-made cheese. Yet when the
meal

Was ended, Luke (for so the Son was named)

And his old Father both betook themselves
To such convenient work as might employ
Their hands by the fireside ; perhaps to card
Wool for the Housewife’s spindle, or repair
Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe,

Or other implement of house or field.

Down from the ceiling, by the chimney !s edge,

That in our ancient uncouth country style
With huge and black projection overbrowed
Large space beneath, as duly as the light
Of day grew dim the Housewife hung a lamp ;

An aged utensil, which had performed
Service beyond all others of its kind.

Early at evening did it bum — and late,

Surviving comrade of uncounted hours,

Which, going by from year to year, had found,

And left, the couple neither gay perhaps
Nor cheerful, yet with objects and with hopes,

Living a life of eager industry.

And now, when Luke had reached his eighteenth year,
There by the light of this old lamp they sate,

Father and Son, while far into the night
The Housewife plied her own peculiar work,

Making the cottage through the silent hours
Murmur as with the sound of summer flies.

This light was famous in its neighbourhood,

And was a public symbol of the life

That thrifty Pair had lived. For, as it chanced,

Their cottage on a plot of rising ground

Stood single, with large prospect, north and south,

High into Easedale, up to Dunmail-Raise,

And westward to the village near the lake ;

105

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And from this constant light, so regular
And so far seen, the House itself, by all
Who dwelt within the limits of the vale,

Both old and young, was named The Evening Star.

Thus living on through such a length of years,

The Shepherd, if he loved himself, must needs
Have loved his Helpmate ; but to Michael’s heart
This son of his old age was yet more dear —

Less from instinctive tenderness, the same
Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all —
Than that a child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,

Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts,
And stirrings of inquietude, when they
By tendency of nature needs must fail.

Exceeding was the love he bare to him,

His heart and his heart’s joy 1 For oftentimes
Old Michael, while he was a babe in arms,

Had done him female service, not alone
For pastime and delight, as is the use
Of fathers, but with patient mind enforced
To acts of tenderness ; and he had rocked
His cradle, as with a woman's gentle hand.

And, in a later time, ere yet the Boy
Had put on boy’s attire, did Michael love,

Albeit of a stern unbending mind,

To have the Young-one in his sight, when he
Wrought in the field, or on his shepherd’s stool
Sate with a fettered sheep before him stretched
Under the large old oak, that near his door
Stood single, and, from matchless depth of shade,
Chosen for the Shearer’s covert from the sun,

Thence in our rustic dialect was called
The Clipping Tree, a name which yet it bears.

There, while they two were sitting in the shade,

106

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

With others round them, earnest all and blithe,

Would Michael exercise his heart with looks
Of fond correction and reproof bestowed
Upon the Child, if he disturbed the sheep
By catching at their legs, or with his shouts
Scared them, while they lay still beneath the shears.

And when by Heaven’s good grace the boy grew up
A healthy Lad, and carried in his cheek '

Two steady roses that were Eve years old ;

Then Michael from a winter coppice cut
With his own hand a sapling, which he hooped
With iron, making it throughout in all
Due requisites a perfect shepherd's staff,

And gave it to the Boy ; wherewith equipt •

He as a watchman oftentimes was placed
At gate or gap, to stem or turn the flock ;

And, to his office prematurely called,

There stood the urchin, as you will divine,

Something between a hindrance and a help ;

And for this cause not always, I believe,

Receiving from his Father hire of praise ;

Though nought was left undone which staff, or voice,
Or looks, or threatening gestures, could perform.

But soon as Luke, full ten years old, could stand
Against the mountain blasts ; and to the heights,

Not fearing toil, nor length of weary ways,

He with his Father daily went, and they
Were as companions, why should I relate
That objects which the Shepherd loved belore
Were dearer now ? that from the Boy there came
Feelings and emanations— things which were
Light to the sun and music to the wind ;

And that the old Man's heart seemed bom again ?

Thus in his Father’s sight the Boy grew up :

And now, when he had reached his eighteenth year,
107

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

He was his comfort and his daily hope.

While in this sort the simple household lived
From day to day, to Michael’s ear there came
Distressful tidings. Long before the time
Of which I speak, the Shepherd had been bound
In surety for his brother’s son, a man
Of an industrious life, and ample means ;

But unforeseen misfortunes suddenly
Had prest upon him ; and old Michael now
Was summoned to discharge the forfeiture,

A grievous penalty, but little less

Than half his substance. This unlooked-for claim,

At the first hearing, for a moment took

More hope out of his life than he supposed

That any old man ever could have lost.

As soon as he had armed himself with strength
To look his trouble in the face, it seemed
The Shepherd’s sole resource to sell at once
A portion of his patrimonial fields.

Such was his first resolve ; he thought again,

And his heart failed him. “ Isabel,” said he,

Two evenings after he had heard the news,

** I have been toiling more than seventy years,

And in the open sunshine of God’s love
Have we all lived ; yet if these fields of ours
Should pass into a stranger’s hand, I think
That I could not lie quiet in my grave.

Our lot is a hard lot ; the sun himself
Has scarcely been more diligent than I ;

And I have lived to be a fool at last
To my own family. An evil man
That was, and made an evil choice, if he
Were false to us ; and if he were not false,

There are ten thousand to whom loss like this
Had been no sorrow. 1 forgive him ; — but
zoS

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

'Twere better to be dumb than to talk thus.

When I began, my purpose was to speak
Of remedies and of a cheerful hope.

Our Luke shall leave us, Isabel ; the land
Shall not go from us, and it shall be free ;

He shall possess it, free as is the wind
That passes over it. We have, thou know’st,

Another kinsman— he will be our friend
In this distress. He is a prosperous man,

Thriving in trade — and Luke to him shall go,

And with his kinsman’s help and his own thrift
He quickly will repair this loss, and then
He may return to us. If here he stay,

What can be done ? Where every one is poor,

What can be gained ? ”

At this the old Man paused,
And Isabel sat silent, for her mind
Was busy, looking back into past times.

There’s Richard Bateman, thought she to herself.

He was a parish-boy — at the church-door
They made a gathering for him, shillings, pence
And halfpennies, wherewith the neighbours bought
A basket, which they filled with pedlar’s wares ;

And, with this basket on his arm, the lad
Went up to London, found a master there,

Who, out of many, chose the trusty boy

To go and overlook his merchandise

Beyond the seas ; where he grew wondrous rich.

And left estates and monies to the poor.

And, at his hirth-place, built a chapel, floored
With marble which he sent from foreign lands.

These thoughts, and many others of like sort,

Passed quickly through the mind of Isabel,

And her face brightened. The old Man was glad,

And thus resumed : — ** Well, Isabel I this scheme
109

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

These two days, has been meat and drink to me.

Far more than we have lost is left us yet.

—We have enough— I wish indeed that I
Were younger ; — but this hope is a good hope.

— Make ready Luke’s best garments, of the best
Buy for him more, and let us send him forth
To-morrow, or the next day, or to-night : _

—If he could go, the Boy should go to-night.”

Here Michael ceased, and to the fields went forth
With a light heart. The Housewife for five days
Was restless morn and night, and all day long
Wrought on with her best fingers to prepare
Things needful for the journey of her son.

But Isabel was glad when Sunday came
To stop her in her work : for, when she lay
By Michael’s side, she through the last two nights
Heard him, how he was troubled in his sleep :

And when they rose at morning she could see
That all his hopes were gone. That day at noon
She said to Luke, while they two by themselves
Were sitting at the door, “ Thou must not go :

We have no other Child but thee to lose,

None to remember — do not go away,

For if thou leave thy Father he will die.”

The Youth made answer with a jocund voice ;

And Isabel, when she had told her fears,

Recovered heart. That evening her best fare
Did she bring forth, and all together sat
Like happy people round a Christmas fire.

With daylight Isabel resumed her work ;

And all the ensuing week the house appeared
As cheerful as a grove in Spring : at length
rhe expected letter from their kinsman came,

With kind assurances that he would do
His utmost for the welfare of the Boy ;
no

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

To which, requests were added, that forthwith
Ke might be sent to him. Ten times or more
The letter was read over ; Isabel
Went forth to show ft to the neighbours round ;

Nor was there at that time on English land
A prouder heart than Luke’s. When Isabel
Had to her house returned, the old Man said,

*' Ke shall depart to-morrow.” To this word
The Housewife answered, talking much of things
Which, if at such short notice he should go,

Would surely be forgotten. But at length
She gave consent, and Michael was at ease.

Near the tumultuous brook of Greenhead Ghyll,

In that deep valley, Michael had designed
To build a Sheepfold ; and, before he heard
The tidings of his melancholy loss,

For this same purpose he had gathered up
A heap of stones, which by the streamlet’s edge
Lay thrown together, ready for the work.

With Luke that evening thitherward he walked :

And soon as they had reached the place he stopped,
And thus the old Man spake to him : — “ My Son,
To-morrow thou wilt leave me : with full heart
I look upon thee, for thou art the same
That wert a promise to me ere thy birth,

And all thy life hast been my daily joy.

I will relate to thee some little part
Of our two histories ; 'twill do thee good
When thou art from me, even if I should touch
On things thou canst not know of. — After thou
First cam’st into the world— as oft befalls
To new-bom infants — thou didst sleep away
Two days, and blessings from thy Father’s tongue
Then fell upon thee. Day by day passed on,

And still I loved thee with increasing love.

in

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Never to living ear came sweeter sounds
Than when I heard thee by our own fireside
First uttering, without words, a natural tune ;

While thou, a feeding babe, didst in thy joy
Sing at thy Mother’s .breast. Month followed month,
And in the open fields my life was passed
And on the mountains ; else I think that thou
Hadst been brought up upon thy Father's knees.

But we were playmates, Luke : among these hills,

As well thou knowest, in us the old and young
Have played together, nor with me didst thou
Lack any pleasure which a boy can know.”

Luke had a manly heart ; but at these words
He sobbed aloud. The old Man grasped his hand,

And said, ** Nay, do not take it so — I see
That these are things of which I need not speak.

— Even to the utmost I have been to thee

A kind and a good Father : and herein

I but repay a gift which I myself

Received at others’ hands ; for, though now old

Beyond the common life of man, I still

Remember them who loved me in my youth.

Both of them sleep together : here they lived,

As all their Forefathers had done ; and when
At length their time was come, they were not loth
To give their bodies to the family mould.

I wished that thou should’st live the life they lived :
But, ’tis a long time to look back, my Son,

And see so little gain from threescore years.

These fields were burthened when they came to
me ;

Till I was forty years of age, not more
Than half of my inheritance was mine.

I toiled and toiled ; God blessed me in my work,

And till these three weeks past the land was free.

XI2

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

—It looks as if it never could endure
Another Master. Heaven forgive me, Luke,
if I judge ill for thee, but it seems good
That thou should'st go.”

At this the old Man paused ;
Then, pointing to the stones near which they stood,
Thus, after a short silence, he resumed :

“ This was a work for us ; and now, my Son,

It is a work for me. But, lay one stone —

Here, lay it for me, Luke, with thine own hands.

Nay, Boy, be of good hope ; — we both may live
To see a better day. At eighty-four
I still am strong and hale ; — do thou thy part ;

I will do mine. — I will begin again

With many tasks that were resigned to thee :

Up to the heights, and in among the storms,

Will I without tlice go again, and do
All works which I was wont to do alone,

Before I knew thy face.— Heaven bless thee, Boy I
Thy heart these two weeks has been beating fast
With many hopes ; it should be so — yes — yes —

I knew that thou could’st never have a wish
To leave me, Luke : thou hast been bound to me
Only by links of love : when thou art gone,

What will be left to us !— But, I forget
My purposes. Lay now the corner-stone,

As I requested ; and hereafter, Luke,

When thou art gone away, should evil men
Be thy companions, think of me, my Son,

And of this moment ; hither turn thy thoughts,

And God will strengthen thee : amid all fear
And all temptation, Luke, I pray that thou
May'st bear in mind the life thy Fathers lived,

Who, being innocent, did for that cause
Bestir them in good deeds. Now, fare thee well —

h 113

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

When thou retum’st, thou in this place wilt see
A work which is not here : a covenant
’Twill be between us ; but, whatever fate
Befall thee, I shall love thee to the last,

And bear thy memory with me to the grave.”

The Shepherd ended here ; and Luke stooped down,
And, as his Father had requested, laid
The first stone of the Sheepfold. At the sight
The old Man's grief broke from him ; to his heart
He pressed his Son, he kiss&d him and wept ;

And to the house together they returned.

— Hushed was that House in peace, or seeming peace,
Ere the night fell : — with morrow’s dawn the Boy
Began his journey, and when he had reached
The public way, he put on a bold face ;

And all the neighbours, as he passed their doors,
Came forth with wishes and with farewell prayers,
That followed him till he was out of sight.

A good report did from their Kinsman come,

Of Luke and his well-doing : and the Boy
Wrote loving letters, full of wondrous news,

Which, as the Housewife phrased it, were throughout
“The prettiest letters that were ever seen.”

Both parents read them with rejoicing hearts.

So, many months passed on : and once again
The Shepherd went about his daily work
With confident and cheerful thoughts ; and now
Sometimes when he could find a leisure hour
He to that valley took his way, and there
Wrought at the Sheepfold. Meantime Luke began
To slacken in his duty ; and, at length,

He in the dissolute city gave himself
To evil courses : ignominy and shame
Fell on him, so that he was driven at last
To seek a hiding-place beyond the seas, '

114

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

There is a comfort in the strength of love ;

’Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset the brain, or break the heart :

I have conversed with more than one who well
Remember the old Man, and what he was
Years after he had heard this heavy news.

His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks
He went, and still looked up to sun and cloud,

And listened to the wind ; and, as before,

Performed all kinds of labour for his sheep,

And for the land, his small inheritance.

And to that hollow dell from time to time
Did he repair, to build the Fold of which
His flock had need. ’Tis not forgotten yet
The pity which was then in every heart
For the old Man— and ’tis believed by all
That many and many a day he thither went,

And never lifted up a single stone.

There, by the Sheepfold, sometimes was he seen
Sitting alone, or with his faithful Dog,

Then old, beside him, lying at his feet.

The length of full seven years, from time to time,

He at the building of this Sheepfold wrought,

And left the work unfinished when he died.

Three years, or little more, did Isabel
Survive her Husband : at her death the estate
Was sold, and went into a stranger’s hand.

The Cottage which was named the Evening Star
Is gone — the ploughshare has been through the ground
On which it stood ; great changes have been wrought
In all the neighbourhood : — yet the oak is left
That grew beside their door ; and the remains
Of the unfinished Sheepfold may be seen
Beside the boisterous brook of Greenhead Ghyll.

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

With this poem it is natural to associate one
written some two years later, in which the same
deep sympathy is shown with the lives and
sufferings of the poor. In ** Resolution and
Independence,” however, the central interest
lies, not in the narrative itself, but in the moral
deduced, and that moral is distinctively Words-
worthian. That through faith and fortitude a
man may lift himself above the influence of
external circumstance was one of his cardinal
thoughts, and it is very characteristic of him
that this inspiring lesson should here be linked
with a figure so obscure as that of the old
leech-gatherer. His own account of the poem,
contained in a letter to some friends, will be
read with interest.

I will explain to you in prose my feelings in writing
that poem. ... I describe myself as having been
exalted to the highest pitch of delight by the joyousness
and beauty of nature ; and then as depressed, even
in the midst of those beautiful objects, to the lowest
dejection and despair. A young poet in the midst of
the happiness of nature is described as overwhelmed
by the thoughts of the miserable reverses which have
befallen the happiest of men, vis. poets. I think of
this till I am so deeply impressed with it that I con-
sider the manner in which I was rescued from my
dejection and despair almost as an interposition
of Providence. A person reading the poem with
feelings like mine will have been awed and controlled,
expecting something spiritual or supernatural. What
is brought forward ? A lonely place, “ a pond by
which an old man was, far from all house or

WORDSWORTH 6? HIS POETRY

home ” j 1 not stood, nor sat, but was , — the figure pre-
.sented in the most naked simplicity possible. The
feeling of spirituality or supematuralness is again
referred to as being strong in my mind in this passage.
“How came he here ? " thought I, “ or what can he
be doing ? ” I then described him, whether ill or well
is not for me to judge with perfect confidence ; but
this I can affirm, that though 1 believe God has given
me a strong imagination, I cannot conceive a figure
more impressive than that of an old man like this, the
survivor of a wife and ten children, travelling alone
among the mountains and all lonely places, carrying
with him his own fortitude and the necessities which
an unjust state of society has laid upon him.

RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE

There was a roaring in the wind all night ;

The rain came heavily and fell in floods ;

But now the sun is rising calm and bright ;

The birds are singing in the distant woods ;

Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods ;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters ;

And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.

All things that love the sun are out of doors ;

The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth j

The grass is bright with rain-drops ; — on the moors

The hare is running races in her mirth ;

And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,

Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

t Tbs text was subsequently altered at this point, os will be seen.

1X7

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

I was a Traveller then upon the moor,

I saw the hare that raced about with joy ;

I heard the woods and distant waters roar ;

Or heard them not, as happy as a boy :

The pleasant season did my heart employ :

My old remembrances went from me wholly ;

And all the ways of men, so vain and melancholy.

But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might
Of joy in minds that can no further go,

As high as we have mounted in delight
In our dejection do we sink as low ;

To me that morning did it happen so ;

And fears and fancies thick upon me came ;

Dim sadness — and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor
could name.

I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky ;

And I bethought me of the playful hare :

Even such a happy Child of earth am I ;

Even as these blissful creatures do I fare ;

Far from the world I walk, and from all care ;

But there may come another day to me —

Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.

My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought.

As if life’s business were a summer mood ;

As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good ;

But how can He expect that others should
Build for him, sow for him, and at his call
Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all ?

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,

The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride ;

Of Him who walked in glory and in joy
zx8

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Following his plough, along the mountain-side :

By our own spirits are we deified :

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness ;

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

Now, whether it were by peculiar grace,

A leading from above, a something given,

Yet it befell, that, in this lonely place,

When I with these untoward thoughts had striven,
Beside a pool bare to the eye of heaven
1 saw a Man before me unawares :

The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.

As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie
Couched on the bald top of an eminence ;

Wonder to all who do the same espy,

By what means it could thither come, and whence ;
So that it seems a thing endued with sense :

Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf
Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself ;

Such seemed this Man, not all alive nor dead,

Nor all asleep— in his extreme old age :

His body was bent double, feet and head
Coming together in life’s pilgrimage ;

As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage
Of sickness felt by him in times long past,

A more than human weight upon his frame had cast.

Himself he propped, limbs, body, and pale face,

Upon a long grey staff of shaven wood :

And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,

Upon the margin of that moorish flood
Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,

That heareth not the loud winds when they call
And moveth all together, if it move at all.

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which he conned,

As if he had been reading in a book :

And now a stranger’s privilege I took ;

And, drawing to his side, to him did say,

“This morning gives us promise of a glorious day.”

A gentle answer did the old Man make,

In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew :

And him with further words I thus bespake,

" What occupation do you there pursue ?

This is a lonesome place for one like you.”

Ere he replied, a flash of mild surprise
Broke from the sable orbs of his yet-vivid eyes,

His words came feebly, from a feeble chest,

But each in solemn order followed each,

With something of a lofty utterance drest —

Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach
Of ordinary men ; a stately speech ;

Such as grave Livers do in Scotland use,

Religious men, who give to God and man their dues

He told, that to these waters he had come
To gather leeches, being old and poor :

Employment hazardous and wearisome 1
And he had many hardships to endure :

From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor ;
Housing, with God’s good help, by choice or chance,
And in this way he gained an honest maintenance.

The old Man still stood talking by my side ;

But now his voice to me was like a stream
Scarce heard ; nor word from word could I divide ;
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And the whole body of the Man did seem
Like one whom I had met with in a dream ;

Or like a man from some far region sent,

To give me human strength, by apt admonishment.

My former thoughts returned : the fear that kills ;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed ;

Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills ;

And mighty Poets in their misery dead.

—Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,

My question eagerly did I renew,

" How is it that you live, and what is it you do ? ”

He with a smile did then his words repeat ;

And said, that, gathering leeches, far and wide
He travelled ; stirring thus about his feet
The waters of the pools where they abide.

“ Once I could meet with them on every side ;

But they have dwindled long by slow decay ;

Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may."

While he was talking thus, the lonely place,

The old Man’s shape, and speech— all troubled me :
In my mind’s eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,

Wandering about alone and silently.

While I these thoughts within myself pursued,

He, having made a pause, the same discourse renewed.

And soon with this he other matter blended,
Cheerfully uttered, with demeanour land,

But stately in the main ; and when he ended,

I could have laughed myself to scorn to find
In that decrepit Man so firm a mind.

“ God," said I, "be my help and stay secure ;

I’ll think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor ! "

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

In 1801 Wordsworth began to use the sonnet.
One afternoon his sister read to him some
sonnets of Milton. Already acquainted with
them as he was, he was then particularly struck
by their “ dignity, simplicity, and majestic
harmony.” He at once “ took fire,” and that
same afternoon produced three sonnets — “ the
first I ever wrote except an irregular one at
school.”

The next year he and Dorothy spent a month’s
holiday in Calais. Pn July 31 they left London
for Dover, and at a very early hour crossed
Westminster Bridge. Here is an extract from
Dorothy’s “ Journal ” : —

Left London between five and six o’clock of the
morning outside the Dover coach. A beautiful
morning. The city, St. Paul’s, with the river — a
multitude of little boats, made a beautiful sight as we
crossed Westminster Bridge ; the houses not over-
hung by their clouds of smoke, and were hung out
endlessly ; yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a
pure light, that there was something like the purity of
one of Nature’s own grand spectacles.

Such was the impression which that early
morning ride made upon one of the two
travellers. The impression which it made upon
the other is to be found in the magnificent
sonnet — one of Wordsworth’s most perfect
things — which was actually written on the roof
of the coach, and afterwards underwent no
verbal change.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER
BRIDGE

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Dear Child 1 dear Girl I that walkest with me here, 1

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,

Thy nature is not therefore less divine :

Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year ;

And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

Wordsworth was the most prolific, and on
the whole perhaps the greatest, of English
sonnet-writers ; he produced upwards of 400
poems in this form ; and while many of these
(including the 132 of the Ecclesiastical series
and the 14 on the Punishment of Death) belong
to the least inspired part of his output, his best
work in this difficult field by reason of its
volume no less than of its excellence entitles
him to a position of pre-eminence. Un-
doubtedly the severe limitations of the form
itself exercised a beneficial influence on his
style. “ In his larger poems his language is
sometimes slovenly, and occasionally, as Sir
Walter Scott said, he chooses to crawl on all-
fours ; but this is rarely the case in the Sonnets
. . . the language, like the thought, is that of a
great master.” 2 Two of his sonnets are
sonnets on the sonnet, and these, though of
later composition, may fittingly be given here.

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room ;

And hermits are contented with their cells ;

And students with their pensive citadels ;

1 It is a question ■whether this reters to Dorothy, or, as seems more probable,
to one of two companions of the Wordsworths, Annette and Caroline Vallon,
the latter the natural daughter of Wordsworth, born in 1792, and the former '
the child’s mother,

* J. Dennis, " English Sonnets,” pp. 220, 221,

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

important step now taken by the poet. On their
return from Calais he and Dorothy stayed for a
month in London, and on October 4 he was
quietly married in Brompton Church, Yorks, to
Mary Hutchinson. He took her back to Dove
Cottage, where her coming made little outward
difference in the arrangements of the household,
and did not in the least disturb the relations of
brother and sister. Once more it was a case of
three people with one soul. One poem belong-
ing to the early years of his married life has
already been quoted. To this I will now add
two sonnets of many years later — 1841 — which
are eloquent of the deep and quiet love which
remained unchanged by lapse of time. The
occasion was the painting of a portrait of Mrs.
Wordsworth by Miss Margaret Gillies, and
Wordsworth told his daughter that he “ never
poured out anything more truly from the
heart.” This we can well believe. The touch-
ing tenderness of the second sonnet must always
give it a high place in that rarer kind of love
poetry which deals, not with love’s spring-
tide of youthful passion, but with its calm
autumnal beauty.

TO A PAINTER

All praise the Likeness by thy skill portrayed ;
But ’tis a fruitless task to paint for me,

Who, yielding not to changes Time has made,
By the habitual light of memory see
Eyes unbedimmed, see bloom that cannot fade,
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And smiles that from their birth-place ne'er shall
flee

Into the land where ghosts and phantoms be ;

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

x

I N June 1803 Wordsworth’s first child, a
son, was born, and on August 16 he set
out for a tour in Scotland with Dorothy
and Coleridge as his companions. Coleridge
was, however, as Wordsworth said, “ in bad
spirits, and somewhat too much in love with his
own dejection ” ; he soon tired of the incessant
rains, and at Loch Lomond gave up the expedi-
tion and started for Edinburgh, leaving brother
and sister to go on together.

On the day of his departure, which was
Sunday, August 28, as the friends were descend-
ing a hill towards the loch, they overtook two
grey-plaided girls. “They answered us,”
writes Dorothy in her “ Journal,” “ so sweetly
that we were quite delighted, at the same time
that they stared at us with an innocent look of
wonder. I think I never heard the English
language sound more sweetly than from the
mouth of the elder of these girls, while she
stood at the gate answering our inquiries, her
face flushed with the rain ; her pronunciation
was clear and distinct ; without difficulty ; yet
slow, like that of a foreign speech.” This elder
girl, who was “ exceedingly beautiful,” made as
strong an impression upon the two men of the
party as upon Dorothy. Coleridge called her
“a divine creature,” and the memory of the
meeting inspired Wordsworth, on his return
home, to write the following poem.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

TO A HIGHLAND GIRL
Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower I

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

A face with gladness overspread 1
Soft smiles, by human kindness bred l
And seemliness complete, that sways
Thy courtesies, about thee plays ;

With no restraint, but such as springs
From quick and eager visitings
Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach
Of thy few words of English speech :

A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife
That gives thy gestures grace and life
So have I, not unmoved in mind,

Seen birds of tempest-loving kind —

Thus beating up against the wind.

What hand but would a garland cull
For thee who art so beautiful ?

0 happy pleasure 1 here to dwell
Beside thee in some heathy dell ;

Adopt your homely ways, and dress,

A Shepherd, thou a Shepherdess I
But I could frame a wish for thee
More like a grave reality :

Thou art to me but as a wave
Of the wild sea ; and I would have
Some claim upon thee, if I could,

Though but of common neighbourhood.

What joy to hear thee, and to see 1
Thy elder Brother I would be,

Thy Father— anything to thee 1 .

Now thanks to Heaven ! thd£ of its grace
Hath led me to this lonely place.

Joy have I had ; and going hence

1 bear away my recompence.

In spots like these it is we prize

Our Memory, feel that she hath eyes :

Then, why should I be loth to stir ?

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

I feel this place was made for her ;

To give new pleasure like the past.

Continued long as life shall last.

Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart,

Sweet Highland Girl 1 from thee to part :

For I, methinks, till I grow old,

As fair before me shall behold,

As I do now, the cabin small,

The lake, the bay, the waterfall ;

And Thee, the Spirit of them all 1

“The sort of prophecy with which the verses
conclude,” Wordsworth told Miss Fenwick long
afterwards, “ has, through God’s goodness,
been realized, and now, approaching the close
of my seventy-third year, I have a most vivid
remembrance of her and the beautiful objects
with which she was surrounded.” She became
for him indeed, it would seem, a kind of ideal
type of womanly loveliness. He referred to her
again in “The Three Cottage Girls” in his
“Continental Memorials” seventeen years
later ; and he even confessed — though such a
confidence was perhaps scarcely judicious —
that four lines (unidentified) originally composed
as part of this Highland poem formed the germ
of his verses to Mary Hutchinson, “She was a
Phantom of Delight.”

At Dumfries a visit was paid to the grave of
Burns, then unmarked by any stone, and to the
cottage where the poet died. This visit was
commemorated in three poems in Burns’s
characteristic stanza-form, the first of which
shall be here reproduced.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS

I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold,

At thought of what I now behold :

As vapours breathed from dungeons cold,

Strike pleasure dead,

So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid.

And have I then thy bones so near,

And thou forbidden to appear ?

As if it were thyself that’s here
I shrink with pain ;

And both my wishes and my fear
Alike are vain.

Off weight — nor press on weight 1 — away
Dark thoughts 1— they came, but not to stay ;
With chastened feelings would I pay
The tribute due

To him, and aught that hides his clay
From mortal view.

Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius ** glinted ” forth,

Rose like a star that touching earth,

For so it seems,

Doth glorify its humble birth
With matchless beams.

The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow,

The struggling heart, where be they now ? —

Full soon the Aspirant of the plough,

The prompt, the brave,

Slept, with the obscurest, in the low
And silent grave.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

I mourned with thousands, but as one
More deeply grieved, for He was gone
Whose light I hailed when first it shone,

And showed my youth
How Verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.

Alas ! where’er the current tends,

Regret pursues and with it blends, —

Huge Criffel’s hoary top ascends
By Skiddaw seen, —

Neighbours we were, and loving friends
We might have been ;

True friends though diversely inclined ;

But heart with heart and mind with mind,

Where the main fibres are entwined,

Through Nature's skill,

May even by contraries be joined
More closely still.

The tear will start, and let it flow ;

Thou “ poor Inhabitant below,”

At this dread moment — even so —

Might we together

Have sate and talked where gowans blow,

Or on wild heather.

What treasures would have then been placed
Within my reach ; of knowledge graced
By fancy what a rich repast 1
But why go on ? —

Oh | spare to sweep, thou mournful blast,

His grave grass-grown.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

There, too, a Son, his joy and pride,

{Not three weeks past the Stripling died,} ^

Lies gathered to his Father’s side,

Soul-moving sight !

Yet one to which is not denied
Some sad delight :

For he is safe, a quiet bed
Hath early found among the dead,

Harboured where none can be misled,

Wronged, or distrest ;

And surely here it may be said
That such are blest.

And oh for Thee, by pitying grace
Checked oft-times in a devious race,

May He who halloweth the place w

Where Man is laid
Receive thy Spirit in the embrace
For which it prayed I

Sighing I turned away ; but ere
Night fell I heard, or seemed to hear,

Music that sorrow comes not near,

A ritual hymn,

Chaunted in love that casts out fear
By Seraphim.

Two other noteworthy poems are associated
with this Scottish tour. The first of these, like
the lines “To a Highland Girl,” was the out-
come of a chance meeting. One Sunday
evening after sundown, brother and sister were
walking along the shore of Lake Ketterine, ('
when, as Dorothy records, they met “ two ^
i34

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

neatly dressed women, without hats. . . . One
of them said to us in a friendly soft tone of
voice, ‘ What, are you stepping westward ? ’ I
cannot describe how affecting this simple expres-
sion was in that remote place, with the western
sky in front, yet glowing with the departed
sun. William wrote the following poem long
after, in remembrance of his feelings and mine.”

STEPPING WESTWARD
“ What, you are stepping westward ?" — " Yea."

— ’Twould be a wildish destiny,

If we, who thus together roam

In a strange Land, and far from home,

Were in this place the guests of Chance :

Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,

Though home or shelter he had none,

With such a sky to lead him on ?

The dewy ground was dark and cold ;

Behind, all gloomy to behold ;

And stepping westward seemed to be
A land of heavenly destiny :

I liked the greeting ; ’twas a sound
Of something without place or bound ;

And seemed to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft, and she who spake
Was walking by her native lake :

The salutation had to me
The very sound of courtesy :

Its power was felt ; and while my eye
Was fixed upon the glowing Sky,

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

The echo of the voice enwrought
A human sweetness with the thought
Of travelling through the world that lay
Before me in my endless way.

The second of the two poems in question was
inspired in part by his own experience, in part
by that of another. The sight of the reapers
in the harvest fields through which the tourists
passed recalled to Wordsworth’s mind “a
beautiful sentence in a MS. * Tour in Scotland ’
written by a friend, the last line being taken
from it verbatim .” The reference is to the
following passage in Thomas Wilkinson’s
“Tours to the British Mountains ” (published
in 1824) : “ Passed a female yvho was reaping
alone ; she sang in Erse, as she bended over
her sickle ; the sweetest human voice I ever
heard ; her strains were tenderly melancholy,
and felt delicious, long after they were heard no
more.” Such is the origin of “The Solitary
Reaper,” and there is perhaps no other poem of
Wordsworth’s which has so much verbal magic
as this.

THE SOLITARY REAPER
Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lais 1 /

Reaping and singing by herself ;

Stop here, or gently pass 1
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain ;

0 listen I for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound. •

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

through a region the romantic associations of
which he was of all men the most competent to
interpret. “ My sister and I often talk of the
happy days we spent in your company,” wrote
Wordsworth afterwards. “ Such things do not
often occur in life.” The two poets parted at
Hawick, and a couple of days later the Words-
worths were once more at Dove Cottage.
Dorothy’s account of their return gives us so
charming a glimpse of the little household that
it must not be omitted : “ Sunday, Sept. 25th,
1803. A beautiful autumnal day. Break-
fasted at a public-house by the road-side ;
dined at Threlkeld ; arrived at home betWeen
eight and nine o’clock, where we found Mary
in perfect health, Joanna Hutchinson with her,
and little John asleep in the clothes-basket by
the fire.”

XI

I N 1805 the shadow of a great sorrow fell
suddenly across Wordsworth’s placid
life. His sailor-brother John, whom he
loved with all the quiet intensity of his nature,
was shipwrecked and drowned in the English
Channel. “For myself,” Wordsworth wrote
in that hour of darkness, ** I feel there is some-
thing cut out of my life which cannot be
restored. ... I never wrote a line without
thought of giving him pleasure. . . . But let
me stop. I will not be cast down ; even if only
for his sake I will not be dejected. I have much
yet to do, and pray God to give me strength and
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

power : his part of the agreement between us
is brought to an end, mine remains ; and I hope
when I shall be able to think of him with a
calmer mind, that the remembrance of him
dead will even animate me more than the joy
which I had in him living.” This is the “ deep
distress ” which, he tells us, “ humanised ”
his soul. He wrote some * Elegiac Verses ’ in
memory of his brother, but the note of sorrow
is most finely struck, not in these, but rather in
a poem belonging to the same period which
ranks amongst the greatest of his productions,
and which I here give in full. The Sir George
Beaumont, to whom it introduces us, was a
wealthy connoisseur whose friendship, as Mr.
Myers has said, formed for many years the
poet’s “ closest link with the world of culture
and art.” He was not a great painter ; but
the genuine feeling for nature shown in his
landscapes made a strong appeal to Words-
worth’s sympathies.

ELEGIAC STANZAS

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE, 1 IN
A STORM, PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile 1
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee :

I saw thee every day ; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

' Not apparently, os Is commonly supposed, Pcele Castle In the Isle of Man,
but PH Castle, near Barrow-in-Furness. See Prof. Knight's note in the
Erenlcy edition ol Wordsworth’s " Poetical Works," iiL 56, 57.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air I
So like, so very like, was day to day !

Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there ;

It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm I it seemed no sleep ;

No mood, which season takes away, or brings :

I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.

Ah I then, if mine had been the Painter’s hand,

To express what then I saw ; and add the gleam,

The light that never was, on sea or land,

The consecration, and the Poet’s dream ;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile,

Amid a world how different from this 1
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile ;

On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years ; a chronicle of heaven ; —

Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,

Elysian quiet, without toil or strife ;

No motion but the moving tide, a breeze,

Or merely silent Nature’s breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,

Such Picture would I at that time have made :

And seen the soul of truth in every part,

A stedfast peace that might not be betrayed.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Another noble poem is connected with John’s
memory — the “ Character of a Happy Warrior.”
Some of the features of this ideal portrait were
admittedly derived from Nelson ; but Nelson’s
relations with Lady Hamilton made it impossible
for Wordsworth “ to connect his name with
the poem as I could wish, or even to think of
him with satisfaction in reference to the idea
of what a warrior ought to be.” This he subse-
quently stated in a note in which he further
declared that ** many elements of the character
here portrayed were found in my brother John.”
As a study of ideal manhood, in which strength
and tenderness, courage and purity are com-
bined, this short poem is a masterpiece ; and
there is, as has been well said, “ a Roman
majesty in its simple and weighty speech.”

CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WARRIOR
Who is the happy Warrior ? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be ?

—It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought :
Whose high endeavours are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright :
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn ;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,

But makes his moral being his prime care ;

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,

And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train J
Turns his necessity to glorious gain ;

In face of these doth exercise a power
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Which is our human nature’s highest dower :

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Is happy as a Lover ; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired ;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw ;

Or if an unexpected call succeed,

Come when it will, is equal to the need :

—He who, though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence,

Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes ;

Sweet images I which, wheresoe’er he be,

Are at his heart ; and such fidelity
It is his darling passion to approve ;

More brave for this, that he hath much to love
’Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a Nation’s eye, ^

Or left unthought-of in obscurity, —

Who, with a toward or untoward lot,

Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not —

Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won :
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,

Nor thought of tender happiness betray ;

Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,

From well to better, daily self-surpast :

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,

Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,

And leave a dead unprofitable name —

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ;

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause :
This is the happy Warrior ; this is He
That every Man in arms should wish to be.

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Before v/e close our record of the- Dove
Cottage period we have still to deal with the
famous Immortality Ode, written according to
Wordsworth’s statement between 1803 and
1806, with an interval of “ two years at least ”
between ** the four first stanzas and the re-
maining part.” In that interval, it is not
inopportune to recall, he had lost his brother,
and the tempering influences of sorrow are
undoubtedly to be felt in the deepened tone of
the concluding passages. It must be frankly
admitted that there is an initial flaw in this
great ode ; the Platonic idea from which it
starts — that of the soul’s pre-existence — has
been justly censured as too fantastic to be made
the basis of a philosophical poem ; and though
Wordsworth himself protested against the literal
interpretation of so “ shadowy a notion,” even
its use as a symbol to represent the nearness of
the child to nature and God may still be objected
to on the ground that such a view of childhood
is in flat contradiction to the facts of common
experience. Yet as Wordsworth gives us poetry
and not mere philosophy, inability to accept his
data need not prevent us from enjoying the
magnificent edifice which he rears upon them.
Briefly stated, his argument seems to be this.
The soul of man is divine ; it comes into this
earthly life, not a blank (as Lockian empiricism
had asserted), but bringing with it high spiritual
instincts and powers. But the interests of the
mundane and the temporal encroach upon it ;
and the divine instincts are stifled. We must

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

etrive, therefore, to keep these instincts alive ,*
to maintain the continuity of spiritual life ; to
translate into the reasoned convictions of man-
hood the child’s innate and spontaneous faith.
To do this we must live as much as possible
among the deeper things of our own natures
and in intimate communion with the divine
soul of the universe. Then we shall rejoice
that reminiscences of the distant past, faint and
shadowy though they be, do in fact bear witness
to the soul’s divine origin and heritage and to its
kinship with the eternal order of things.

ODE

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS
OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore ; —

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair ;

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

The sunshine is a glorious birth ;

But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief :

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

And I again am strong :

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ;

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ;

I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,

The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay ;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May
Doth every Beast keep holiday j—

Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happv
Shepherd-boy !

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make ; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ;

My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel— I feel it all.

Oh evil day 1 if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning,

And the Children are culling
On every side,

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETR1

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm,
And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm : —

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear 1
— But there’s a Tree, of many, one,

A single Field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone :

The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat :

Whither is fled the visionary gleam ?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream ?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting :

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar :

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home :

Heaven lies about us in our infancy I
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy ;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,

And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended ;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with -pleasures of her own ;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And, even with something of a Mother’s mind.

And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses , 1
A six years’ Darling of a pigmy size !

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,

Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,

With light upon him from his father’s eyes I
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learned art ;

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral ;

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song :

Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ;

But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride
The little Actor cons another part ;

Filling from time to time his “ humorous stage ”
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

That Life brings with her in her equipage ;

As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul’s immensity ;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep

1 The reference is to Coleridge's little eon, Hartley.

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Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind, —

Mighty Prophet ! Seer blest 1
On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by ;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height.

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ?

Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight.

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life I

O joy 1 that in our embers
Is something that doth live,

That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive !

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction : not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest —

Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : —
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise ;

But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings ;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

WORDSWORTH © HIS POETRY

Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised :

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,

Are yet a master light of all our seeing ;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake,

To perish never ;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy 1

Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song 1
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound !

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May 1
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower ;

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind ;

In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be ;

In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering ;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves !

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ;

I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet ;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality ;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

XII

A SECOND child, a girl christened Dorothy,
had been born in August 1804, and
when in June 1805 a third child,
Thomas, came, Dove Cottage was found to be
too small for the fast increasing family. The
Wordsworths were therefore compelled to leave

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it, and while seeking another home of their own
to suit them, spent the winter of 1806-7 in a
farmhouse at Coleorton, Leicestershire, lent to
them by Sir George Beaumont. Here they were
visited by Coleridge, on his return from Malta,
to whom Wordsworth read the now finished
“ Prelude.” Then in the following summer
they took a newly built house, Allan Bank, on
the height between Grasmere and Easedale.
Here they had to encounter all the discomforts
of damp cellars and smoky chimneys ; on one
cold day, it is recorded, the whole family had to
go to bed because not a fire in the house could
be induced to burn. The worst of these defects
were, however, remedied, and the Wordsworths
remained at Allan Bank till the spring of 1811.
There Coleridge, broken in health and in
wretched spirits, was again their guest ; there
they were also visited by De Quincey, who
presently became the tenant of Dove Cottage ;
and there two more children were born,
Catherine in 180S and William in 1810. Another
migration was then made, this time to Grasmere
Parsonage., But the death of two of the
children, Catherine in her fourth year and
Thomas in his seventh, made the house un-
bearable to the sorrowing father. “ It stands
close to the churchyard,” he wrote to Lord
Lonsdale, “ and I have found it absolutely
necessary that we should quit a place which, by
recalling to our minds at every moment the
losses we have sustained in the course of the
last year, would grievously retard our progress
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

towards that tranquillity which it is our duty to
aim at.” In the spring of 1813 Wordsworth
accordingly left the parsonage and settled at
Rydal Mount, which was to be his home for the
rest of his life.

While at Coleorton he was busy chiefly with
the preparation of the two volumes of his works
which appeared in 1807. Among the new
poems in these volumes was the ‘ * Song at the
Feast of Brougham Castle,” which is specially
remarkable for the closing stanzas describing
“ the good Lord Clifford.” The second of these
might fittingly be applied to the poet himself :

Alas I the impassioned minstrel did not know
How, by Heaven’s grace, this Clifford’s heart was
framed,

How he, long forced in humble walks to go,

Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ;

His daily teachers had been woods and rills,

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

In him the savage virtue of the Race,

Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead :

Nor did he change ; but kept in lofty place
The wisdom which adversity had bred.

Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth ;

The Shepherd-lord was honoured more and more ;
And, ages after he was laid in earth,

“The good Lord Clifford ” was the name he bore.

*54

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

These fine stanzas contain, in Dowden’s
phrase, the “peculiar virtue” of the poem.
But as the same critic notes, its “ feudal and
chivalric spirit ” is also_very striking. That
spirit reappears in “ The White Doe of Ryl-
stone,” founded on a local tradition connected
with the country round Bolton Priory, which
Wordsworth visited in the summer of the same
year. In that poem, as he himself perceived,
he apparently challenged comparison with
Scott. There is thus some interest in his own
statement of the essential difference between
his work on a feudal subject and that of his
great contemporary. Scott, he pointed out, had
concerned himself only with external incident.
He on the other hand had been preoccupied
with the underlying moral and spiritual meaning
of his story.

During the interval between the vacating of
Dove Cottage and the settlement at Rydal
Mount, Wordsworth worked hard at "The
Excursion," the greater part of which was
written at this time. He also came forward as
a politician and prose writer on current events.
The most considerable result of his industry in
this field was the pamphlet on the Convention
of Cintra, which Canning thought the finest
piece of political eloquence which had appeared
since Burke, and in which he energetically
supported the rights of the Peninsular peoples
against the military despotism of France.
Naturally his interest in such questions over-
flowed into verse, and thus we have a number
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

of political sonnets which have often been com-
pared with the political sonnets of Milton.
Those ** composed while the author was engaged
in writing a Tract occasioned by the Convention
of Cintra ” are very characteristic.

Not ’mid the world’s vain objects that enslave
The free-born Soul — that World whose vaunted skill
In selfish interest perverts the will,

Whose factions lead astray the wise and brave —

Not there ; but in dark wood and rocky cave,

And hollow vale which foaming torrents fill
With omnipresent murmur as they rave
Down their steep beds, that never shall be still :

Here, mighty Nature ! in this school sublime
I weigh the hopes and fears of suffering Spain ;

For her consult the auguries of time,

And through the human heart explore my way ;

And look and listen— gathering, whence I may,
Triumph, and thoughts no bondage can restrain.

Alas ! what boots the long laborious quest
Of moral prudence, sought through good and ill ;

Or pains abstruse — to elevate the will,

And lead us on to that transcendent rest
Where every passion shall the sway attest
Of Reason, seated on her sovereign hill ;

What is it but a vain and curious skill,

If sapient Germany must lie deprest,

Beneath the brutal sword ? — Her haughty Schools
Shall blush ; and may not we with sorrow say —

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules,

Among the herdsmen of the Alps, have wrought
More for mankind at this unhappy day
Than all the pride of intellect and thought ?

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

The mention of Milton above will excuse the
introduction here of another sonnet, also born
of political interests, though dating from some
years earlier.

Milton 1 thou should’st he living at this hour :
England hath need of thee : she is a fen
Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower.
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ;

Oh 1 raise us up, return to us again ;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart :

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea :
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life’s common way,

In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

XIII

R YDAL MOUNT stands on the sloping side
of a rocky hill called Nab Scar. Below
^ are Rydal Lake and the Rothay,
flowing down to Windermere ; in front, ** a
length of level valley, the extended lake, and a
terminating ridge of low hills ” ; behind and
on both sides, “ lofty fells which," Wordsworth
noticed, brought " the heavenly bodies to touch,
as it were, the earth upon the mountain tops,"
while among the valleys they seemed to shine
" as winter lamps at a distance among the
leafless trees.” These observations led him,
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

soon after his settlement at the Mount, to write
the following verses :

If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,

Then, to the measure of that heaven-born light,

Shine, Poet 1 in thy place, and be content : —

The stars pre-eminent in magnitude,

And they that from the zenith dart their beams,
(Visible though they be to half the earth,

Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness)
Are yet of no diviner origin,

No purer essence, than the one that burns,

Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge

Of some dark mountain ; or than those which seem

Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps,

Among the branches of the leafless trees.

All are the undying offspring of one Sire :

Then, to the measure of the light vouchsafed,

Shine, Poet I in thy place, and be content.

Wordsworth’s appointment, at Lord Lons-
dale’s instigation, as distributor of stamps for
Westmorland at a salary of £ 400 a year made
a welcome addition to his resources at a time
when they were being rather sorely taxed by
the needs of his fast growing family. He now
gave much time to the education of his eldest
son, and this led him to a careful re-reading of
some of the, Latin writers, notably Vergil, a poet
whose spirit was in many ways cognate with his
own. A new inspiration — that of classic story
— thus came into his work, the most important
result of which is the fine poem “ Laodamia.”
When the remarkable chasteness of diction in
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

this poem is carefully considered, no surprise
will be felt at Wordsworth’s assertion that it

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Forth sprang the impassioned Queen her Lord to clasp ;
Again that consummation she essayed ;

But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp
As often as that eager grasp was made.

The Phantom parts — but parts to re-unite,

And re-assume his place before her sight.

“ Protesilaus, lo 1 thy guide is gone !

Confirm, I pray, the vision with thy voice :

This is our palace, — yonder is thy throne ;

Speak, and the floor thou tread’st on will rejoice.

Not to appal me have the gods bestowed
This precious boon ; and blest a sad abode.’*

“ Great Jove, Laodamla I doth not leave
His gifts imperfect : — Spectre though I be,

I am not sent to scare thee or deceive ;

But in reward of thy fidelity.

And something also did my worth obtain ;

For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain.

“ Thou knowest, the Delphic oracle foretold
That the first Greek who touched the Trojan strand
Should die ; but me the threat could not withhold :

A generous cause a victim did demand ;

And forth I leapt upon the sandy plain ;

A self-devoted chief — by Hector slain.”

“ Supreme of Heroes — bravest, noblest, best 1
Thy matchless courage I bewail no more.

Which then, when tens of thousands were deprest
By doubt, propelled thee to the fatal shore ;

Thou found’st — and I forgive thee — here thou art—

A nobler counsellor than my poor heart.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

** The Gods to us are merciful— and they
Yet further may relent : for mightier far
Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway
Of magic potent over sun and star,

Is love, though oft to agony distrest,

And though his favourite seat be feeble woman’s
breast.

“ But if thou goest, I follow — ” “ Peace l ” he said, —
She looked upon him and was calmed and cheered ;
The ghastly colour from his lips had fled ;

In his deportment, shape, and mien, appeared
Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,

Brought from a pensive though a happy place.

He spake of love, such love as Spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure ;

No fears to beat away — no strife to heal —

The past unsighed for, and the future sure ;

Spake of heroic arts in graver mood
Revived, with finer harmony pursued ;

Of all that is most beauteous — imaged there
In happier beauty ; more pellucid streams,

An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And fields invested with purpureal gleams ;

Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey.

Yet there the Soul shall enter which hath earned
That privilege by virtue. — “ 111,” said he,

'* The end of man’s existence I discerned,

Who from ignoble games and revelry

Could draw, when we had parted, vain delight,

While tears were thy best pastime, day and night ;

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

“ And while my youthful peers before my eyes
(Each hero following his peculiar bent)

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

“ Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend —

Seeking a higher object. Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end ;

For this the passion to excess was driven —

That self might be annulled ! her bondage prove
The fetters of a dream, opposed to love.”

Aloud she shrieked ! for Hermes reappears 1

Round the dear Shade she would have clung 'tis

vain : °

The hours are past— too brief had they been years •
And him no mortal effort can detain : ’

Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day
He through the portal takes his silent way,

And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse She lay.

Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved,

She perished ; and, as for a wilful crime,

By the just Gods whom no weak pity moved,
Was doomed to wear out her appointed time,
Apart from happy Ghosts, that gather flowers
Of blissful quiet f mid unfading bowers.

—Yet tears to human suffering are due ;

And mortal hopes defeated and o’erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man alone,
As fondly he believes.— Upon the side
Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained)

A knot of spiry trees for ages grew
From out the tomb of him for whom she died ;
And ever, when such stature they had gained
That Ilium’s walls were subject to their view,
The trees’ tall summits withered at the sight ;
A constant interchange of growth and blight I

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And is this — Yarrow ? — This the Stream
Of which my fancy cherished,

So faithfully, a waking dream ?

An image that hath perished 1
O that some Minstrel’s harp were near,

To utter notes of gladness,

And chase this silence from the air,

That fills my heart with sadness 1 . . .

The vapours linger round the Heights,

They melt, and soon must vanish ;

One hour is theirs, nor more is mine —

Sad thought, which I would banish,

But that I know, where’er I go,

Thy genuine image, Yarrow !

Will dwell with me — to heighten Joy,

And cheer my mind in sorrow.

This year “ The Excursion ” was published,
and the year following, the first collective
edition of Wordsworth’s poems, with a further
essay setting out his theories of poetry. His
“Thanksgiving Ode,” written for the General
Thanksgiving of January 1816, was his next
important production. This last of any im-
portance of his political poems, like several of
the earlier sonnets, will always be noteworthy
for its treatment of the character of Napoleon,
in whom Wordsworth had seen from the first
the incarnation of materialism, and whose
downfall he welcomed as the providential
vindication of spiritual forces against the “ big
battalions ” theory for which the mighty
conqueror had stood. In such protest against
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

the mere “ idolatry of power,” Wordsworth was
true to all the noblest ideals of his poetic
vocation. None the less, as Lord Morley has
said, “ Waterloo may be taken for the date at
which his social grasp began to fail.” By this
time he had travelled far from the political faith
of his young manhood ; he was now a tory
among the tories ; and henceforth the march of
events in England only served to make him the
more narrow and obstinate in his toryism.
Hence we find him, in his extreme reaction
against the movements which in his youth had
shaken the framework of society, zealously
supporting existing institutions and even the
abuses which presently inspired a fresh energy
of reform. He saw in “ the feudal power yet
surviving in England ” a bulwark against the
growth of that popular government which he
had come to dread. He allied himself with the
forces of intolerance and obscurantism. He
opposed Catholic Emancipation and the Reform
Bill, and wrote a sonnet attacking the Ballot.
He was justified indeed in seeing spiritual power
at work in Napoleon’s overthrow. But it is
deplorable that his theory of the divine govern-
ment of the world should lead him to suggest
that the cholera was God’s condemnation of
the great reforms which he loathed.

These things, however, do not in themselves
much concern us here. It is more to the point
to remember that, as Lord Morley further says,
Wordsworth’s “poetic glow” began to fail
along with his “ social grasp.” We are now
i6jr

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

entering upon the long period of his decline.
For thirty years more he continued to write
with all the old industry and with occasional
visitations of the old fire. But he added little
of vital importance to the work which he had
done. Indeed, we may almost say, with the
critic just quoted, that in the following great
poem of 1818 we have “ our last glimpse of
Wordsworth in the full and peculiar power of
his genius.”

COMPOSED UPON AN EVENING OF
EXTRAORDINARY SPLENDOUR AND
BEAUTY

Had this effulgence disappeared
With flying haste, I might have sent,

Among the speechless clouds, a look
Of blank astonishment ;

But ’tis endued with power to stay,

And sanctify one closing day,

That frail Mortality may see —

What is ? — ah no, but what can be !

Time was when field and watery cove
With modulated echoes rang,

While choirs of fervent Angels sang
Their vespers in the grove ;

Or, crowning, star-like, each some sovereign height,
Warbled, for heaven above and earth below,

Strains suitable to both. — Such holy rite,

Methinks, if audibly repeated now
From hill or valley, could not move
Sublimer transport, purer love,

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Than doth this silent spectacle— the gleam—

The shadow — and the peace supreme 1

No sound is uttered,— but a deep
And solemn harmony pervades
The hollow vale from steep to steep,

And penetrates the glades.

Far-distant images draw nigh,

Called forth by wondrous potency
Of beamy radiance, that imbues,

Whate’er it strikes, with gem-like hues I
In vision exquisitely clear,

Herds range along the mountain side ;

And glistening antlers are descried ;

And gilded flocks appear.

Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve J
But long as god-like wish, or hope divine,

Informs my spirit, ne’er can I believe
That this magnificence is wholly thine I
—From worlds not quickened by the sun
A portion of the gift is won ;

An intermingling of Heaven’s pomp is spread
On ground which British shepherds tread 1

And, if there be whom broken ties
Afflict, or injuries assail,

Yon ha zy ridges to their eyes
Present a glorious scale,

Climbing suffused with sunny air,

To stop — no record hath told where !

And tempting Fancy to ascend,

And with immortal Spirits blend I

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Their practicable way.

Come forth, ye v drooping old men, look abroad,

And see to what fair countries ye are bound I
And if some traveller, weary of his road,

Hath slept since noon-tide on the grassy ground,
Ye Genii 1 to his covert speed ;

And wake him with such gentle heed >

As may attune his soul to meet the dower
Bestowed on this transcendent hour 1

Such hues from their celestial Urn
Were wont to stream before mine eye,

Where’er it wandered in the morn
Of blissful infancy.

This glimpse of glory, why renewed ?

Nay, rather speak with gratitude ;

For, if a vestige of those gleams
Survived, ’twas only in my dreams.

Dread Power ! whom peace and calmness serve
No less than Nature’s threatening voice,

If aught unworthy be my choice,

From Thee if I would swerve ;

Oh, let thy grace remind me of the light
Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored ;

Which, at this moment, on my waking sight
Appears to shine, by miracle restored ;

My soul, though yet confined to earth,

Rejoices in a second birth I
— ’Tis past, the visionary splendour fades ;

And night approaches with her shades. 1

In 1820 Wordsworth spent four months
abroad with his wife, Dorothy, and some friends,

1 "Allusions to the Ode entitled ‘Intimations of Immortality/ ” Words,
worth pointed out, " pervade the last stanza of the foregoing Poem."

170

WORDSWORTH S? HIS POETRY

and recorded his impressions in a number of
sonnets and brief poems which he published as
“ Memorials of a Tour on the Continent.”
That year he also published “The River
Duddon : A Series of Sonnets,” in several of
which there is a welcome return of the old
power and felicity. The two examples here
given are the 18th and the 34th.

SEATHWAITE CHAPEL

Sacred Religion I “ mother of form and fear,”
Dread arbitress of mutable respect,

New rites ordaining when the old are wrecked,

Or cease to please the fickle worshipper ;

Mother of Love 1 (that name best suits thee here)
Mother of Love 1 for this deep vale, protect
Truth’s holy lamp, pure source of bright effect,
Gifted to purge the vapoury atmosphere
That seeks to stifle it ; — as in those days
When this low Pile a Gospel Teacher knew,
Whose good works formed an endless retinue :

A Pastor such as Chaucer's verse portrays ;

Such as the heaven-taught skill of Herbert drew ;
And tender Goldsmith crowned with deathless
praise 1

AFTER-THOUGHT

I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,

As being past away. — Vain sympathies !

For, backward, Duddon, as I cast my eyes,

I see what was, and is, and will abide ;

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide ;

The Form remains, the Function never dies ;

While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,

We Men, who in our mom of youth defied
The elements, must vanish ; — be it so I
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour ;

And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,

Through love, through hope, and faith’s transcendent
dower,

We feel that we are greater than we know.

Another and more ambitious series, which
appeared in 1822, was that of the “ Ecclesias-
tical Sonnets,” to which reference has already
been made. The chief influence behind these
is to be found in the conversations on church
history which, while a guest at Coleorton,
Wordsworth had with Beaumont, who was then
building a new church on his estate, though
popular interest in the Catholic Relief Bill,
then under discussion, doubtless acted as a
further stimulus. In them Wordsworth under-
takes to trace the history of the Church in
England from the introduction of Christianity
into Britain down to his own times. Their
title is well chosen, for they are ecclesiastical
poems in the narrower sense of the term, and
not, except in a secondary way, religious or
devotional. That in these sonnets he should
have anticipated at various points the ideas of
the Oxford Movement of some years later,
especially in his defence of Laud, is certainly a
fact upon which passing emphasis may be laid.
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Yet his Anglicanism did not prevent him from
sympathizing with the leaders of the Reforma-
tion, nor did it destroy his old admiration of
Milton, greatly as he regretted “ some of his
opinions, whether theological or political .” 1
I select for transcription the opening sonnet of
Part iii, which is remarkable at least for the
circumstances of its composition. It was,
Wordsworth relates, the result of a dream ; the
figure seen was that of his daughter ; the
“ whole passed as here represented ” ; and the
poem was conceived and completed “ word for
word as It now stands ” in the course of a
walk from Grasmere to Ambleside. It was
not often, Wordsworth adds, that his sonnets
were thus produced in a finished state by
such a single effort. “Most of them,” on
the contrary, “ were frequently retouched in
the course of composition, and, not a few,
laboriously.”

I saw the figure of a lovely Maid
Seated alone beneath a darksome tree,

Whose fondly-overhanging canopy

Set off her brightness with a pleasing shade.

No Spirit was she ; that my heart betrayed,

For she was one I loved exceedingly ;

But while I gazed in tender reverie

(Or was it sleep that with my Fancy played ?)

The bright corporeal presence — form and face —
Remaining still distinct grew thin and rare,

Like sunny mist ; — at length the golden hair,

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Shape, limbs, and heavenly features, keeping pace
Each with the other in a lingering race
Of dissolution, melted into air.

Happy as he was at home, Wordsworth
continued to feel that yearning for travel which,
as he confessed, was ingrained in his character.
In 1823 he was again abroad, this time with his
wife as his only companion. In 1824 he took
his wife and daughter to North Wales, visiting
his old friend Jones, with whom he had made
his first memorable expedition many years
before. In 1825 there was much talk in the
household of a long residence on the Continent.
This came to nothing at the time. But when
in 1827 Sir George Beaumont died, leaving to
Wordsworth an annuity of £100 to be spent in
a yearly tour, the plan which had been dropped
was taken up again, though in a less ambitious
form, and in 1828 he started with his daughter
and Coleridge for Belgium and the Rhine. Then
in 1831 came his third visit to Scotland, during
which he again and for the last time saw Scott,
then hopelessly shattered in health and on the
eve of that visit to the Continent from which he
was to return only to die. This sad meeting
was the theme of the third Yarrow poem.

YARROW REVISITED
The gallant Youth, who may have gained,

Or seeks, a “ winsome Marrow,”

Was but an Infant in the lap
When first I looked on Yarrow ;

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Once more, by Newark’s Castle-gate
Long left without a warder,

I stood, looked, listened, and with Thee,

Great Minstrel of the Border 1

Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day,

Their dignity installing

In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves
Were on the bough, or falling ;

But breezes played, and sunshine gleamed —

The forest to embolden ;

Reddened the fiery hues, and shot
Transparence through the golden.

For busy thoughts the Stream flowed on
In foamy agitation ;

And slept in many a crystal pool
For quiet contemplation :

No public and no private care
The freeborn mind enthralling,

We made a day of happy hours,

Our happy days recalling.

Brisk Youth appeared, the Morn of youth,

With freaks of graceful folly, —

Life’s temperate Noon, her sober Eve,

Her Night not melancholy ;

Past, present, future, all appeared
In harmony united,

Like guests that meet, and some from far,

By cordial love invited.

And if, as Yarrow, through the woods
And down the meadow ranging,

Did meet us with unaltered face,

Though we were changed and changing ;

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

If, then , some natural shadows spread
Our inward prospect over,

The soul’s deep valley was not slow
Its brightness to recover.

Eternal blessings on the Muse,

And her divine employment 1
The blameless Muse, who trains her Sons
For hope and calm enjoyment ;

Albeit sickness, lingering yet,

Has o’er their pillow brooded ;

And Care waylays their steps — a Sprite
Not easily eluded.

For thee, O Scott I compelled to change
Green Eildon-hill and Cheviot
For warm Vesuvio’s vine-clad slopes ;

And leave thy Tweed and Tiviot
For mild Sorento's breezy waves ;

May classic Fancy, linking
With native Fancy her fresh aid,

Preserve thy heart from sinking I

Oh I while they minister to thee,

Each vying with the other,

May Health return to mellow Age
With Strength, her venturous brother ;

And Tiber, and each brook and rill
Renowned in song and story,

With unimagined beauty shine,

Nor lose one ray of glory !

For Thou, upon a hundred streams,

By talcs of love and sorrow,

Of faithful love, undaunted truth,

Hast shed the power of Yarrow ;

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And streams unknown, hills yet unseen,

Wherever they invite Thee,

At parent Nature’s grateful call,

With gladness must requite Thee.

A gracious welcome shall be thine,

Such looks of love and honour

As thy own Yarrow gave to me
When first I gazed upon her ;

Beheld wliat I had feared to see,

Unwilling to surrender

Dreams treasured up from early days,

The holy and the tender.

And what, for this frail world, were all
That mortals do or suffer,

Did no responsive harp, no pen,

Memorial tribute offer ?

Yea, what were mighty Nature’s self ?

Her features, could they win us,

Unhelped by the poetic voice
That hourly speaks within us ?

Nor deem that localised Romance
Plays false with our affections ;

Unsanctifies our tears— made sport
For fanciful dejections :

Ah, no 1 the visions of the past
Sustain the heart in feeling

Life as she is — our changeful Life,

With friends and kindred dealing.

Bear witness, Ye, whose thoughts that day
In Yarrow’s groves were centred ;

Who through the silent portal arch
Of mouldering Newark entered ;

x 77

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

And clomb the winding stair that once
Too timidly was mounted
By the “ last Minstrel,” (not the last I)

Ere he his Tale recounted.

Flow on for ever, Yarrow Stream I
Fulfil thy pensive duty,

Well pleased that future Bards should chant
For simple hearts thy beauty ;

To dream-light dear while yet unseen,

Dear to the common sunshine,

And dearer still, as now 1 feel,

To memory’s shadowy moonshine I

Before leaving Abbotsford Wordsworth ex-
pressed the hope, which he could scarcely have
felt, that Scott’s health would be greatly bene-
fited by his tour. The incident and Scott’s
reply were recorded by Wordsworth six years
later in his “ Musings near Aquapendente ” :
Years followed years, and when, upon the eve
Of his last going from Tweed-side, thought turned,
Or by another’s sympathy was led,

To this bright land, Hope was for him no friend,
Knowledge no help ; Imagination shaped
No promise. Still, in more than ear-deep seats,
Survives for me, and cannot but survive
The tone of voice which wedded borrowed words
To sadness not their own, when, with faint smile
Forced by intent to take from speech its edge,

He said, " When I am there, although ’tis fair,
’Twill be another Yarrow.”

Meanwhile sorrows were coming fast upon
him. In the winter- of 1828-29 his beloved
sister was prostrated by the first serious illness
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

of her life ; her mind as well as her physical
strength soon began to fail ; and before long
she was a confirmed invalid. Coleridge, the
“friend of more than thirty years,” died in
1834. In 1836 Sarah Hutchinson, long a
member of the Rydal Mount household, passed
away, leaving a gap which no one else could fill.
The circle of his literary acquaintances was also
being rapidly thinned ; and when in 1835 came
news of the death of the Ettrick -Shepherd, he
poured forth his sadness over his many losses
in some verses of touching tenderness and
simplicity. These verses show that he was
beginning to experience that sense of loneliness
which comes to those who, as age creeps on,
find themselves the survivors of their generation,
and, like Tennyson’s Bedivere, “ among new
men, strange faces, other minds.” The refer-
ences, as will be seen, are to Hogg himself,
Scott, Coleridge, Lamb (on whom Wordsworth
had already written a memorial poem), Crabbe,
and Felicia Hemans.

EXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE
DEATH OF JAMES HOGG
When first, descending from the moorlands,

I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,

The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

When last along its banks I wandered,

Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,

My steps the Border-minstrel led.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,

'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies ;

And death upon the braes of Yarrow,

Has closed the Shepherd-poet’s eyes :

Nor has the rolling year twice measured,

From sign to sign, its stedfast course,

Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source ;

The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,

The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth :

And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,

Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand,

How fast has brother followed brother
From sunshine to the sunless land I

Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,

“ Who next will drop and disappear ? ”

Our haughty life is crowned with darkness,

Like London with its own black wreath,

On which with thee, 0 Crabbe l forth-looking,

I gazed from Hampstead’s breezy heath.

As if but yesterday departed,

Thou too art gone before ; but why,

O’er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered,

Should frail survivors heave a sigh ?

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,

Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep ;

For Her who, ere her summer faded,

Has sunk into a breathless sleep.

No more of old romantic sorrows,

For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid 1
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,

And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead.

In 1837 Wordsworth made his last foreign
trip, to Italy. A visit to Italy had been a dream
of Dorothy’s life, but she was now unable to
travel, and his friend, Crabb Robinson, was the
poet’s only companion. To that friend, whose
“ buoyant spirit ” cheered him on his way, he
dedicated his “ Memorials of a Tour in Italy.”
But, as Robinson records in his “ Diary,” he
wrote but little, while in what he did write
“meditation predominates over observation.”
This tendency of the mind to turn upon itself,
even in the midst of novelties, is evidence of
failing interest in outward things ; and Words-
worth himself felt its import. “ It is too late,”
he often said on the journey ; and once : “I
have matter for volumes, had I but youth to
work it up.” The ageing poet was at length
becoming aware of waning powers. One poem
among these “ Memorials ” possesses in his
own phrase a “rather melancholy ” interest.
It is entitled “The Cuckoo at Laverna.” He
had always loved the cuckoo’s voice, and years
before, at Dove Cottage, he had written some
delightful verses to his favourite bird.

181

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

TO THE CUCKOO

0 blithe New-comer 1 I have heard,

1 hear thee and rejoice.

0 Cuckoo ! shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice ?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,

From hill to hill it seems to pass,

At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale,

Of sunshine and of flowers,

Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring I
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery j

The same whom in my school-boy days

1 listened to ; that Cry

Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green ;

And thou wert still a hope, a love j
Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet ;

Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

O blessed Bird I the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place ;

That is fit home for Thee !

Now at Lavema he has to record his inability,
through growing deafness, to hear the cuckoo’s
beloved cry " till Mr. Robinson had twice or
thrice ” directed his attention to it.

list — 'twas the Cuckoo. — 0 with what delight
Heard I that voice 1 and catch it now, though faint,
Far off and faint, and melting into air,

Yet not to be mistaken. Hark again 1
Those louder cries give notice that the Bird,
Although invisible as Echo’s self,

Is wheeling hitherward. Thanks, happy Creature,
For this unthought-of greeting 1

XIV

O NE satisfaction the years brought to
Wordsworth as some compensation for
the sorrows of advancing life and this
sense of declining strength. He was now at
last coming into his own.

More than any other great English poet he
had to suffer from protracted public neglect,
and, a part cause of this, from the contempt
and ridicule of the official leaders of taste,
notably Jeffrey. That scolding critic, who for
a long time wielded an influence hardly justified
by the quality of his work, had year after year
pursued the poet with the bitterest and most

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

reckless hostility. He denounced the volumes
of 1807 as “ coarse, inelegant, and infantine ” ;
described the themes of the poems as “ low,
silly, and uninteresting ” ; and sneered at the
verses “ To the Small Celandine ” as “ namby-
pamby.” The Immortality Ode he dismissed
as “illegible and unintelligible.” Of “Alice
Fell ” he wrote : “If the printing of such trash
as this be not felt as an insult to the public
taste, we are afraid that it cannot be insulted.”
Speaking of “ Resolution and Independence,”
he defied “ the bitterest enemy of Mr. Words-
worth to produce anything at all parallel from
any collection of English poetry, or even from
the specimens of his friend Mr. Southey ” (an
admirable example, by the way, of the econo-
mical practice known as killing two birds with
one stone). He declared that “ The Excursion ”
would “never do,” and pronounced “The
White Doe of Rylstone ” “ the very worst poem
we ever saw imprinted in a quarto volume ”
and the product of a mind in a state of “ low
and maudlin imbecility.” These are samples
of the “arch-critic’s ” judgment, and though
in places, as we must candidly admit, he erred
rather by virulence of language than by per-
version of opinion, the undiscriminating charac-
ter of his criticism is obvious. Wordsworth
himself took these attacks with extraordinary
equanimity, and begged Lady Beaumont not to
be disturbed by them. “ Never forget,” he
wrote to her, in a spirit of calm self-confidence,
“ what, I believe, was observed to you by
184

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

Coleridge, that every great and original writer,
in proportion as he is great and original, must
himself create the taste by which he is to be
realized.” Yet, though the poet was thus able
to adopt the attitude of quiet indifference,
Jeffrey’s incessant onslaughts had certainly
much to do with the tardiness of his rise to
fame.

The current, however, was now turning.
Public sympathy began to come round to him,
and even Jeffrey was ultimately forced to make
a grudging apology for his “ asperity ” and
“ vivaciiSs of expression.” A new generation
was arising who saw greatness and meaning
in his work to which their fathers had been
blind. Unmistakable signs of growing reputa-
tion and influence followed within the next few
years. In 1838 he received an honorary degree
from the University of Durham. In 1839,
Oxford, always prone to wait till her favours
can be safely bestowed, granted him a similar
mark of approval. In 1840 the Queen Dowager
visited him at Rydal Mount. In 1842 Sir
Robert Peel placed his name on the Civil List
for a pension of £300 a year. In 1843, on the
death of Southey, he was made poet-laureate,
and actually appeared at Court, wearing a suit
which he borrowed from Rogers and which,
though a rather tight fit, did well enough for
the occasion. He was now indeed universally
regarded as the patriarch of English letters.

Three years later he lost his last surviving
brother, Christopher, the Master of Trinity
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WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

College, Cambridge, and in 1847 his only
daughter Dora, who since 1841 had been the
wife of Edward Quillinan. He had borne many
sorrows with a firm courage supported by
religious faith. But he was now old, and this
unexpected blow left him heartbroken. He did
not, however, live long to mourn his beloved
child. On March 12, 1850, while sitting on a
stone seat to watch the setting sun, he caught a
chill, and had to take to his bed. Two days
afterwards he was attacked by severe pains in
his side ; on the 20th pleurisy set in ; on the
23rd he sank peacefully into his final rest. His
mind was filled with thoughts of his daughter
even to the very end. “ Is that Dora ? ” he
had asked, when some one had quietly drawn
the curtains of his bed.

There was some talk of burial in Westminster
Abbey. Far more appropriately his body lies
in Grasmere Churchyard, among the hills and
the people he had loved so well.

The old rude church, with bare, bald tower, is here ;

Beneath its shadow high-born Rotha flows ;

Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near,

And with cool murmur lulling his repose —

Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near.

His hills, his lakes, his streams are with him yet.

Surely the heart that read her own heart clear

Nature forgets not soon : ’tis we forget . 1

1 William Watson : "Wordsworth's Grave."

186

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

xv

W ORDSWORTH’S personality was not
altogether engaging. In his own
family circle, indeed, and in his
daily Intercourse with his rustic neighbours he
was kind and sympathetic, and, as we are told
by Sir Henry Taylor and others, even in general
society, where he was very much less at home,
he could at times unbend and take his share of
the talk about him with a certain dignified
grace. But we feel that on the whole he lacked
geniality and flexibility, that he was a little stiff,
a little austere, often even a little pompous and
not a little dull. He wanted, too, breadth of
outlook, and while undoubtedly his exclusive
attention to the few great subjects of his choice
gave him the power which comes of concentra-
tion in his own special field, such advantage
was purchased by the sacrifice of many interests
which add richness and variety to human life.
The absence of any sense of humour from his
intellectual composition must also be recognized
as another serious defect. But the feature of
his character which perhaps most unfavourably
impressed those who met him, at all events in
his later years, was his entire engrossment with
himself. By temperament he was self-centred
and self-contained, and the peculiar conditions
of his life — his isolation, his lonely and intro-
spective habits, his intense preoccupation with
his own work, the worship paid to him by a

TR*7

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

small coterie of ardent admirers, the neglect of
the general public, and the abuse of the critics —
all helped in different ways to deepen his self-
absorption into an egotism which was not the
less to be regretted because it was bound up
with some of the most estimable qualities of his
nature. One unfortunate aspect of this egotism
was his inability to appreciate the work of his
contemporaries in literature, even when, as in
the case of Scott and Southey, for example, they
happened to be personal friends.

These, however, are but the shortcomings —
the negligible shortcomings — of an essentially
strong and noble character ; and it is upon the
strength and the nobility that I prefer here to
dwell. A north-countryman to his backbone,
if he had something of the hardness he had also
the sterling virtues of the stock from which he
sprang. His simplicity, his indifference to
worldly honour and emolument, his steady
devotion to his art and mission, are alike
admirable. Admirable, too, are his fortitude,
his self-control, the stability of his mind, and
his fine power of linking the ideal with the
commonplaces of the everyday lot. Like his
own skylark, he was

Type of the wise who soar, but never roam.

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.

The “ plain living and high thinking ” which
he inculcated were his own rule and inspiration.
The purity, the lofty temper, the utter trans-

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

parency of soul which we find in his poetry we
find also in his life.

Let me add a pen-portrait of the poet in his
old age from the hand of that great master of
portraiture, Carlyle, who met him at one of
Sir Henry Taylor’s literary breakfast parties.

He talked well in his way, with veracity, easy
brevity, and force — as a wise tradesman would of his
tools and workshop, and as no unwise one could.
His voice was good, frank, and sonorous, though
practically dear, distinct and fordble, rather than
melodious ; the tone of him business-like, sedately
confident ; no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about
being courteous : a fine wholesome rusticity, fresh
as his mountain breezes, sat well on this stalwart
veteran, and on all he said and did. You would have
said he was a usually tadtum man, glad to unlock
himself to audience sympathetic and intdligent
when such offered itsdf. His face bore marks of
much, not always peaceful, meditation ; the look of
it not bland or benevolent, so much as close, impreg-
nable, and hard ; a man multa tacere loqttive
paratus, in a world where he had experienced no lack
of contradictions as he strode along I The eyes were
not very brilliant, but they had a quiet dearness ;
there was enough of brow, and wdl shaped ; rather
too much of cheek (“ horse face " I have heard
satirists say), face of squarish shape and decidedly
longish, as I think the head itsdf was {its ** length ”
going horizontal). He was large-boned, lean, but
still firm-knit, tall, and strong-looking when he
stood ; a right good old sted-grey figure, with a fine
rustic simplirity and dignity about him and a veracious
strength looking through him, which might have
189

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

suited one of those old steel-grey Markgrafs . . .
whom Henry the Fowler set up to ward the marches
and do battle with the intrusive heathen, in a stalwart
and judicious manner.

One personal peculiarity may be mentioned
which has a direct interest for the student of his
work. Rugged of constitution and abstemious
of habit, Wordsworth was able to bear with
impunity any amount of exposure and physical
fatigue ; but the intensity of his excitement
during composition often prostrated him com-
pletely. “ I have never a pen in my hand for
five minutes, ” he once wrote to Beaumont,
“ before my whole frame becomes a bundle of
uneasiness ; a perspiration starts out all over
me, and my chest is oppressed in a manner
which I cannot describe.’ 1

In a note to one of his poems, in which he
rather quaintly apologizes to his wife and sister
for having so often been late for dinner and
further records the irritation in one of his
heels caused by wearing too tight a shoe,
he tells us that “poetic excitement, when
accompanied by protracted labour in com-
position, has throughout my life brought
me more or less bodily derangement.”
Dorothy’s journals are full of such entries as
these : “ William worked at the Leech Gatherer
almost incessantly from morning till teatime . . .
he wearied himself to death.” “William did
not sleep till three o’clock.” “ William very
nervous.” “ William had a bad night, and
ioo

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

was working at his poem.” “We read the
first part of the poem, and were delighted with
it, but William afterwards got to some ugly
place, and went to bed tired out.” “ Poor
William wore himself out and me with labour.”

Wordsworth’s poetry may impress us as we
read by its prevailing serenity. But if, in his
own phrase, there is little in it of “ the tumult
of the soul,” it was none the less the product
of persistent application and great emotional
strain.

It has been the aim of the foregoing pages to
bring out not only the personal interest of that
poetry, but also some of its enduring qualities.
Only a few words of summary will now be
necessary.

Wordsworth, as we have seen, owes his dis-
tinctive position in our literature in part to his
wonderful power as an interpreter of nature,
especially on the spiritual side. More than any
other poet he brought to men “ barricadoed
evermore within the walls of cities ” a revela-
tion of the beauty and of the divine meaning of
“ this goodly Universe.” To make them par-,
takers of his own joy in the “ living Presence of
the Earth ” was one important aspect of his
conscious mission. Deeply deploring the blind-
ness and deafness of the average man to the
glories of the world about him, he believed that
even a superstitious veneration of the forces of
nature was better than apathy born of absorp-
tion in material things.

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

The world is too much with us ; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers :
Little we see in Nature that is ours ;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon I
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune ;

It moves us not. — Great God 1 I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn ;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

It was Wordsworth’s constant purpose to
overcome the apathy against which he makes
this passionate protest ; to open the eyes of his
readers to the loveliness of nature and their
souls to her divine message.

Great as an interpreter of nature, Words-
worth, however, was no less great as an Inter-
preter of human life, and his position in. this
respect is equally distinctive. No one can
read the poems which I have quoted without
feeling this. Here again we are in touch with
what I have called his conscious mission.
“ Every great poet is a teacher,” he wrote to
Beaumont. “I wish to be considered as a
teacher, or as nothing.” In these uncompro-
mising words he announces his directly didactic
purpose. That this purpose is often far too
obtrusive in his work is of course admitted.
That it is to be held responsible for the thousands

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

of lines of dull and prosy moralizings which he
gives us, for instance, in “ The Excursion," is
equally evident. But if too often, in his capacity
of mere homilist, he is satisfied with the bare
inculcation of moral truth, in his really inspired
moods, in his really vital verse, moral truth is
transmuted by him into the purest poetry ; and
then, as in the " Lines Written a Few Miles above
Tintern Abbey,” he is great at once as a poet and
as a teacher. There is nothing, indeed, pre-
tentious or particularly recondite about his
philosophy. It deals with a few central thoughts,
and these thoughts can be easily formulated
and understood. But its simplicity is part of its
virtue and strength. Wordsworth, in fact, is
deep because he is simple. Brushing aside the
merely artificial and conventional ideas about
life and its values in which we are accustomed
to rest, but which confuse our vision and hamper
our spiritual freedom, he throws his emphasis
continually upon the things which are elemental
and essential — upon those primary affections
and impregnable instincts which lie at the very
root of life. He addresses himself to the power
which we have latent within us to lift ourselves
by resolute effort above the entanglements of
circumstance and to live at peace within our-
selves. Above all, let us remember, he is so
bracing and helpful because he is the poet of
happiness, and because, by proclaiming that
the secret of true happiness is to be sought,
not in external conditions, but in the soul, he
shows us where we may purchase it “ without
* X93

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

money and without price.” Virtue, for him, is
the one road to such happiness, and happiness
is its final reward, and though, in Sir Henry
Taylor’s words, he recognizes that “genial
virtue” must often fall back upon “severe
virtue for support,” moral struggle and the
strenuousness of moral purpose must, he
teaches, ultimately issue in the abounding joy
which comes to a nature attuned to the demands
of eternal law. Such is the theme of one of his
noblest poems. _

ODE TO DUTY
Stem Daughter of the Voice of God I
O Duty ! if that name thou love
Who art a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove ;

Thou, who art victory and law
When empty terrors overawe ;

From vain temptations dost set free ;

And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity 1

There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them ; who, in love and truth,

Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth :

Glad Hearts l without reproach or blot
Who do thy work, and know it not :

Oh 1 if through confidence misplaced
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power I around them
cast.

Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be,

194

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

When love is an unerring light,

And joy its own security.

And they a blissful course may hold
Even now, who, not unwisely bold,

Live in the spirit of this creed ;

Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.

I, loving freedom, and untried ;

No sport of every random gust,

Yet being to myself a guide,

Too blindly have reposed my trust :

And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task, in smoother walks to stray ;

But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

Through no disturbance of my soul,

Or strong compunction in me wrought,

I supplicate for thy control ;

But in the quietness of thought :

Me this unchartered freedom tires ;

I feel the weight of chance-desires :

My hopes no more must change their name,

I long for a repose that ever is the same.

Stem Lawgiver 1 yet thou dost wear
The Godhead’s most benignant grace ;

Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face :

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads ;

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ;

And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are
fresh and strong.

To humbler functions, awful Power 1
I call thee : I myself commend

195

WORDSWORTH & HIS POETRY

(Jnto thy guidance from this hour ;

Oh, let my weakness have an end !

Give unto me, made lowly wise,

The spirit of self-sacrifice ;

The confidence of reason give ;

And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live !

If, as Emerson finely says, “ the great poets
are judged by the frame of mind they induce,”
the greatness of the writer of these superb
verses is surely beyond question.

Wordsworth’s inequalities must be apparent
to every one who considers his production as a
whole, and must be frankly recognized. He
wrote much when the poetic inspiration was
upon him, and we have seen something of the
splendid results. But he wrote much also when
the poetic inspiration was not upon him, and
hence the immense amount of absolutely
perishable matter in his too voluminous work.
More than most poets, therefore, he gains by
judicious selection. But when the perishable
matter has been rejected, what remains, though
relatively small in bulk in proportion to the
totality of his output, will, hold its place secure
among the world’s possessions for ever. Sixty
years have now passed since his death, and time
has already justified his firm belief that his
poems would “ co-operate with the benign
tendencies in human nature and society,” and
would, “in their degree, be efficacious in making
men wiser, better, and happier."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following books and essays may be recom-
mended for the further study of Wordsworth and his
work :

TEXT : POEMS

"The Poetical Works of Wordsworth,” ed. Knight
(Library ed., 8 vols.).

" The Poetical Works of Wordsworth,” ed. Knight
(Eversley ed., id vols.).

“Wordsworth's Poems,” ed. Dowden ’ (Aldine ed.,
7 vols.).

“ The Poetical Works of Wordsworth," ed. T. Hutchin-
son (Oxford ed.).

“The Complete Poetical Works of Wordsworth”
(with an Introduction by J. Morley). (Globe ed.)
(This one-volume edition is the most convenient for
the general student.)

“ Wordsworth’s Select Poems, chosen and edited with
a Preface by Matthew Arnold " (Golden Treasury
Series). (The preface is reprinted in Arnold’s
“ Essays in Criticism," vol. ii.)

“Selections from Wordsworth,” ed. Knight.

"Poems by Wordsworth, a Selection,” ed. Dowden
(with a long biographical and critical introduction).
(Athenaeum Press Series.)

TEXT ': PROSE WORKS

“Wordsworth's Prose Works,” ed. Grosart, 3 vols.

ProserWorks of Wordsworth,” ed. Knight, 2 vols.
“Wordsworth’s Literary Criticism,” ed. N. C. Smith.

*97

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM

D. Wordsworth : “ Journals,” ed. Knight, 2 vols.

“ Recollections of a Tour in Scot-
land,” ed. Sliairp.

T. de Quincey : ** Reminiscences of the English Lake
Poets.”

C. Wordsworth : “ Memoirs of Wordsworth,” 2 vols.

W. Knight : “ Life of Wordsworth,” 3 vols.

F. W. H. Myers : “Wordsworth ” (English Men of
Letters).

E. Legouis La J eunesse de Wordsworth.” (English
translation by Matthews.)

D. W. Rannie : “ Wordsworth and his Circle."*

W. Raleigh : “Wordsworth.”

L. Magnus : “ Primer of Wordsworth.”

J. C. Shairp : “On Poetic Interpretation of Nature.”

S. A. Brooke : “ Theology in the English Poets.”

“ Wordsworthiana : Papers read before the Words-
worth Society."

S. T. Coleridge : “ Biographia Literaria,” chaps, xiv-
xx.

E. Caird : ** Wordsworth ” (in “ Essays in Literature
and Philosophy,” vol. i).

R. W. Church: "Wordsworth” (in “Dante and
Other Essays ”).

E. Dowden : “ Prose Works of Wordsworth ” (in
“ Studies in- ; Literature ”).

" Text of Wordsworth’s Poems ” fin
“ Transcripts and Studies^,

A. de Vere : “Wordsworth” (several essays in
“ Essays, chiefly on Poetry ”).

198

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Hutton: “Wordsworth” (in "Essays Theo-
logical and Literary ”).

R. Lowell : “ Wordsworth " (in " Among my
Books

Pater : "Wordsworth " (in “Appreciations ”).
Stephen : " Ethics of Wordsworth " (in “ Hours
in a Library,” 3rd series).

Bagehot : “Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Brown-
, »ng ” (in " Literary Studies,” vol. ii).

, or the " Wordsworth Country,” see
Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes,” ed..E. de Selin-
court.

. Masson : “ In the Footsteps of the Poets.”

. D. Rawnsley : " Literary Associations of the
English Lakes," 2 vols.

Knight : " Through the Wordsworth Country."

the general literary history of Wordsworth's time,
ee

H. Herford : " The Age of Wordsworth " (in
*' Handbooks of English Literature ").

Dowden : " The French Revolution and English
Literature.”